Inquisition
by karebear
Summary: "A period of prolonged and intensive questioning or investigation." Millions of voices cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced, in one moment that united every Force-user in the galaxy without regard to sides and loyalties. One explosion sparks a chain reaction that destroys an Empire, but what then? What if all you're left with is shattered pieces? Original Trilogy era OCs
1. Vigil

_"Love doesn't lead to the dark side. Passion can lead to rage and fear, and can be controlled, but passion is not the same thing as love.  
Love itself will save you, not condemn you."  
— _Jolee Bindo, Knights of the Old Republic

_A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..._

"The Emperor's _dead_," the woman insists harshly. She glares at him with suspicious eyes, as though he's planning to attack her right then and there. "The Empire doesn't exist anymore."

"You think I care about the Empire?" Cyrrus demands. His clothing - along with his weapons, his ship, and everything else about him down to the accent still noticable in his speech - still mark him as her enemy. "I don't give a damn about what Coruscant says. Or the _Jedi_! I care about..." - my wife? - No. They had never even come _close _to talking about anything so permanent. She'd hate the very idea, never let him get away with it... "About Kali," he amends, lamely. "I have to help her. Fix her. I _have _to."

The medic raises an eyebrow, rolls her eyes. She puffs out her cigarra and gives a casual shrug. "If only it were so simple."

Cyrrus slams her against the wall, hard. Shelves rattle, and a picture frame slides off of its hangar and clatters to the floor. Its plexiglass framing doesn't so much as crack, yet the civvie jumps, her eyes wide with fear. "Do _not _fuck with me," he growls. For once, he doesn't care about shields or control. He slips into the old ways. He lets his anger fuel him. Lightning crackles and sparks around his closed fist, as he raises it to take another swing at the doctor.

The woman raises her own shield, ready to deflect him. She is strong in the Force, he can feel it, but she's also untrained and no match for his focused concentration. If she insists on making this a fight, she will lose. He won't care. He doesn't have enough in him to care about anything other than Kali, lying limp and lifeless just out of his reach.

Thankfully, the doctor concedes as soon as it becomes clear that he has no wish to harm her. She moves smoothly out of the way, allowing him access to Kali. He slips into the flimsy, uncomfortable chair at her bedside, and slips her icy cold hand into his own.

He won't leave her alone. He won't leave her lost, not even in her own mind. _Especially _not then.

"Kali," he murmurs. He runs his fingers through her hair, brushing the tangles out of her eyes, watching the way they shift and flutter under half-open lids. She looks like she's sleeping. It's easy enough to convince himself that that's all she's doing. Except that what he can feel in the Force isn't the bright, pure, passionate, all-out spikes of _emotion _that is _her, _the Kali he loves. The emotions he feels from her now are clouded and gray. He sees in the way she freezes sometimes, just _stops_, like a droid, running calculations in her head, responding to orders he can't hear, fighting off voices and unable to figure out how to move forward. And those are the _good _moments, when she isn't paralyzed by whatever nightmares trap her in an unreal world he can't get to. Kali has always been stronger in the Force than she is; her raw potential was enough to tempt their masters into overlooking her stubborn disobedience when they were young. In a decade, the darkness of the temple hadn't been able to crush her spirit or snap out her light. Apparently, they just weren't trying hard enough.

He tells himself it's not as bad as it looks. He reminds himself that in this unconscious state, the turmoil of the galaxy can't touch her. The ongoing war between whatever new Jedi government is forming, and the Empire that had raised her - that had done this to her - is no longer capable of hurting her. He tries to let that war rage around a tiny bubble of safety, tries _so hard_ to create that for them. He tells himself he can fix things. It's a lie, but the only other option is giving up, so he repeats the lie. He repeats it to himself and to her, and sometimes, he imagines, she stirs beneath the gentle touch of his fingers, responding as if she can hear him.

Now as always, she is never still, even asleep. She tosses and turns, fighting nightmares, phantoms of terror from which she cannot break free. This isn't new. She'd been damaged for years. It's only that now there is no longer any practical difference between sleep and waking, for her. The barriers that had kept her functional have been shattered, ground to dust, worn away.

Cyrrus rests his hand over hers, and closes his eyes, and _reaches_. It'd be easy if there were something physically wrong. He's healed her before, from the marks of a dangerous galaxy: blaster burns, electrocution scars, jagged cuts. There is the brand above her chest, seeped anew in dark-side energy. He doesn't touch that. He isn't at all sure he could do anything about it, and she wouldn't want him to anyway. Instead, he reaches deeper, following, step by step, into the tangled pathways of her mind, where she is lost. He doesn't know if she's even _looking _for a way out. But he _has _to try.

He nearly chokes on the heaviness of the darkness that's got her trapped. This is what they'd wanted all along. She'd nearly killed him.

The Empire doesn't need Sith. The Emperor never has. Cyrrus has read the old histories, he knows them perhaps better than anyone alive, even if he is forced by circumstance to keep that knowledge mostly hidden, buried deep. He knows the Rule of Two. The rule that made the Jedi so falsely confident, so certain they were safe. They failed to recognize that a Force-user hardly has to be a Sith to be a danger, that evil - _darkness - _lives in everyone, that it's not even _difficult _to bring out. Fear leads to anger. The galaxy's fires have been burning for centuries, for millennia_. _They are easy to stoke. What the Empire needs, more than Sith, is obedient, unquestioning assassins. That is what they have always been in training to become.

Except, sometimes, someone breaks the rules. And _they are _broken rules: Force-sensitive children born into a galaxy where they are not supposed to exist, born into broken family lines created from an Order that was never supposed to have family. It has always been a fine line they walked, a _dangerous _line. And she's always been in deeper than he has: more emotional, more volatile, less logical, more _well-trained. _He has always feared her fall.

"Kali, I won't leave you alone," he murmurs, but he realizes as he says it that he is only voicing _his own _fears. "Don't leave me," he begs. "Please, Kali, don't leave me alone."

They are not supposed to need anyone. Attachment is dangerous, it weakens you.

It strengthens you.

He will fight the whole of the galaxy to save her, he knows he will, and he knows he _can_. The galaxy might be easier than fighting against _her_. He _cannot _kill her. He will not hurt her. Hasn't she already been hurt enough?

He screams and rages against the unfairness of it all, and feels the coil of anger, _passion, _ and love flare up within his stomach. He draws on it, to strengthen himself, and marches forward into the fight.

It won't be easy. Nothing that's worth it ever is.

Leaving her like this is not an option though.

If he _did this to her_, not knowing the depths of the hell he was throwing her into... (He tells himself he didn't know. He tell himself he wouldn't have done it if he'd known. He tells himself a lot of things). He can make it better. He _has to_.

He draws in a deep breath and presses his will over hers; with gentle, cautious footsteps. It's like walking through fire; a landscape of landmines and tripwires. But the shields he hits are not _hers_, the familiar walls that push him away because she is _so damned afraid_ of letting anyone in. Those walls are gone; utterly eradicated, replaced by mazes of darkness and the constant thrumming of a pounding drum, echoing loud with every heartbeat, overwhelming. It pulses out orders on a frequency he has to struggle to resist even as they attach themselves to a level far more basic than thought or understanding. It's all animal instinct, a fight-or-flight response.

Kali is wounded far more badly than he could ever have anticipated, reduced to nothing but shattered pieces. There is nothing left of who she was, or if there is, it is buried so deep that it will take everything he has, and possibly more, to dig it out from the tangled webs of pain and terror that trap her. He isn't sure how to do this. He doesn't even have the first clue how to start. "Kali, show me," he whispers. "Show me what to do. Show me how to help you. I need your help, okay? Just give me a clue. Please." He runs his fingers gently over her knuckles, listens to the shallow exhalations of her breathing, and he closes his eyes. "Kali, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."

He can see it through her eyes, and it steals his breath away. The power of the hatred she'd felt for him, the all-out terror she'd felt. And then he'd gone and _proven her right_.

But he'd _tried_. He tried everything he could think of, and he couldn't come up with any other way. He _has _to make this right.

He should have known better than to trust her. He should have realized how quickly it could all go wrong, planned for it. Manipulating people's worst hopes and fears, that's what she _does_. But somehow... somehow, he loves her anyway. Trusts her anyway, believes in her anyway. He has to believe that there is something in her worth saving. He _does _believe it. He's _seen _it.

He should've killed her, but he didn't.

Even when she had the blade at his neck, because... because she didn't kill him either. And she could've.

He hadn't seen her in months. The weeks dragged on, one slow, limping day after another as he tried to force himself to pretend he didn't miss her, that this was _normal. _But the truth of it was that he hated himself and he was _terrified _for her. And, deep inside, there was the part of him that he refused to acknowledge that swore she was already dead. Or maybe hoped it. Because he never knew enough - and he knew too much at the same time - about what the alternative must be. He'd seen hints and shadows in the damaged child she'd been when they first met; the girl who pushed him away rather than admit any weakness or real emotion that could be taken advantage of, the way she thrashed in her sleep, haunted by nightmares, and lashed out against voices he couldn't hear. Buried beneath the layers of fear and adrenaline and conditioned responses is the girl stolen from home before she was old enough to _remember _anything about love, who reaches out desperately for _anything _she can believe in or belong to. And damn the consequences. He knows her. He knows her better than anyone else in the galaxy. The things she's told him, the keys she's given him, the walls she's dropped _for _him... it gives him a _chance_. He can only hope that it's enough to save her.

Because the thing is, maybe the only one who knows her better than he does is the one who created her, the one who knows how to pull out every connection within her that can be exploited until there is nothing left. The one who would know to send her after him, to effectively destroy both of them.

He hadn't been thinking as clearly as he should've been - or maybe he just straight-up didn't _care_. He hadn't known until he saw her again - looking the same, in all the ways that mattered - how much he'd missed her, how much pain her _absence _had left in his life; a raw, gaping wound where she should have been.

His heartbeat had sped up when he saw her; dark hair flying behind her, tangled and wild, her thumb curled around her belt loop and the hilt of her lightsaber bouncing against her hip. One of her bootlaces was untied - she either hadn't noticed or simply didn't care. That hadn't surprised him either; it was a simple, meaningless detail that tricked him into believing nothing had changed. And when she'd looked up, he'd seen her eyes - that layered gray-blue, like the depths of the ocean, and the smile creeping across her face when she saw him, waiting for her.

He'd known she'd try to pretend that he didn't matter to her, that seeing him again would never mean anything beyond another routine assignment throwing them together. He'd run for her, reaching out for her touch, desperate for the feel of the warmth of her body pressed up against his, aching for the smell of her. He'd missed tangling his fingers into her dark hair, kissing her, holding her in the darkness until she fell asleep in his arms.

The _last _thing he'd expected was that she'd come after him with a lightsaber, crackling with raw dark side energy - all hatred and anger. And when he'd looked again, her eyes were black and twined with red - or maybe that was just the reflection of her blade. She'd attacked him with vicious ferocity, aiming for the places where she knows he's weak: face, throat, whatever isn't covered by armor. This time, it wasn't a game, or a sparring match. He'd barely managed to grab his own blade in time to save himself. Thank the Force he'd been in the middle of an active army camp and not asleep or something.

He tries, still, to convince himself that she'd given him a fighting chance on purpose. But he knows that wasn't the case. It's wasn't a question of planning, or patience - or lack thereof - she'd have attacked him on sight no matter _where _they were.

What he'd felt rolling off of her in the Force in that moment went beyond any mere emotional trigger. He feels it still, nesting inside her as her body lies motionless in a hospital bed: she _is _the dark side, it screams from her, sucks him into her orbit, like a whirlpool. It lashes out in an unthinking frenzy. He'd fought back with everything he had, saving himself the only way he knew how.

"Kali, _stop_." He'd screamed, and _pushed_ at her with the weight of insistent command behind his words. She'd ignored him, or maybe didn't even hear him, advanced and lifted her lightsaber up for a direct attack; the kind of wild, desperate, all out attack she'd use to defend herself if someone was coming after her. He was _not _attacking her, but something in her mind was _certain _that he was, or would (She was right, the nagging voice of guilt whispers, as he sits there struggling to repair the broken mind trapped within her fragile, unmoving body).

Of course he knows how to plant a suggestion in the Force - it's a technique they all learn, and one she should have been able to recognize and resist. But what he'd done was more than that; harsher and more violent. Perhaps because it's anchored in something _real_: She doesn't trust him. She still believes he wants to hurt her - _kill _her, even.

How could she believe anything different? They'd fought each other with lightsabers and the Force, with words and actions, with everything they had. There was only one way it could ever end: with one or both of them dead.

She'd fought back the only way she ever does, the only way she knows how: she hurt him first. He stepped backward, struggling to get away from her, tripping and landing in an awkward heap, supernaturally aware, as the high-pitched hum of her lightsaber arced closer to his head, of her _pushing_ him, with the Force. He lifted his arm to block her swing, and her saber snapped against his cortosis-weave bracer and stuttered, forcing Kali to pause. He could feel her weight - barely significant compared to the bulk of his armor, as she pressed her hand against his throat. But she didn't push down - didn't choke him. Not yet, maybe. _Not yet, _the critical observation, the simple truth he clings to even now.

He'd stared directly into her eyes, dilated and bright, wild and no different from the times he'd seen her pulled under by the too-obvious visible marks of a glitterstim high. Her breathing was heavy: from the drugs, from the fight, he honestly has no idea.

He'd closed his eyes and let the Force guide his retaliatory strike. Kali cursed and rolled out of the way - he'd known she would, he remembers the way she moves somewhere inside his muscles, he doesn't have to think about it. They'd sparred more times than he can count, he is aware of her reactions and instincts and responses so perfectly that they are _almost _part of his own. He can anticipate her movements, _and_ she knows how to use his defensive stance against him. He isn't willing to go all out; it is the only way she knows how to function.

And there are whispers in her mind, pushing her forward. A sequence of firing neurons operating independently of guilt or thought or anything beyond the animal instinct to _survive_, to fight until she isn't standing any more.

He knows she doesn't see him. He'd known it more than ever as she got in under the reach of his half-hearted defensive swings and _pushed _him backward. She moves faster than he can block even when he's _trying_, she always has. There's that wild light in her eye - the reflecting glow of her blood-red blade, swinging toward his vital center. His throat. His heart.

"Kali, _stop_." he Commands, trying again, trying for real, _pushing_ with everything there is inside him - not outward, not physically, but hitting her the only way he _knows _will work. She doesn't wear armor in the field, never has, but he's _felt _the walls she's built up in her mind to protect herself. And he knows how to knock them down. He doesn't think. He can't afford to. He just _does it_.

He pushes, forcing his way past her walls, and choking. What he touches is almost enough to make him recoil. He can _feel _the darkness, like skittering claws, _poisoning _her. _Screaming_, loud in his ear, there is nothing to make sense of, it's just _pain_, agonizing fire in every nerve, demanding that he _fight to make it stop. _He _pushes _outward, he pushes until he can't feel it anymore.

And then he'd collapsed, panting, struggling to draw breath. He'd heaved and tried to vomit, except that there hadn't been anything in him except for a bit of spit and a bad taste in his mouth. And his heartbeat roaring heavy in his ears.

In his hand, his lightsaber still hummed. He'd snapped it off, and glanced up to see that Kali had also fallen. She lay, twitching, a few meters away from him, sprawled out on the grass. He ran to her, silencing the protests of a body that seemed too heavy to respond to his command. He fell to the ground next to her and fumbled, awkwardly pushing against her exposed skin until his thumb found the pulse at her wrist, pumping strong and steady. She was breathing too, in shallow gasps. Still alive. He repeats the words to himself, the reassurance. He repeats them still.

Her eyes were still open, but glazed and unfocused. He'd tracked her movement, waiting for the sudden twitch or knife in the back that would prove that his last-ditch desperate maneuver to _stop her_ didn't work. But, at the same time, he'd felt her in the Force - or, more accurately, he _didn't - _and that's how he knew that... _whatever _he'd just done, it was more effective than he wanted it to be. Where before, with her - what makes her _her_ - there had always been bright colors and sharp shards like glass, and pounding, crashing waves of emotion and intensity, now, there is nothing. Just white space, empty silence.

He tries to convince himself that it was him or her, that this was justified. It doesn't make it better. It crawls into his soul, this _awareness _of what he's done. Because within it, as she breathes with the soft inhalations of someone sleeping _peacefully_ (but she's not asleep - her eyes are open, she's... _docile_) is the spark of recognition there in her psyche. She's been here before. It's familiar. And a part of her was just _waiting_ for permission to lose herself in this space where she does not have to make decisions or feel pain or face the consequences of her actions.

Tears stung his eyes as he picked her up - when he holds her, she's as light as the child she pretends not to be. Her arms wrapped around his neck and clung to him. She curled up against his body, trusting him in a way she never had while awake. He carried her and whispered soothing comforts that he'd known she wouldn't hear.

He glances down at her, as vulnerable now in this hospitable bed as he had been in his arms that day, weeks ago, and as he strokes her knuckles, still raw with healing defensive wounds, he remembers the frenzy with which she'd attacked him. She'd been triggered by some outside force, one that could manage to manipulate her to go after him only _because _of the connection that had already existed. It's the same damned reason he won't kill her, even to save himself.

"Just let us through!" he'd snapped at the honor guard loitering at the ramp of his ship. It is not her ship - _theirs - _the Scimitar that had been a gift from her master. This is little more than a flying crate. But it contains none of the memories that would be dangerous fuel for a fire that he'd already known was raging out of control. He'd laid her down in his own bunk, and given a simple order. "Sleep," he'd whispered, as he tucked the blankets tightly around her. She obeyed - of course she did. Without even a token protest, her eyes slipped closed. She did not shift or move or curl her fingers into a tight fist, or even turn to face the door, pressing her body as close to the wall as she could manage so that no one could sneak up her and she could defend herself against an attack if it did come. He'd considered curling up next to her, to protect her if she won't, the way he used to. But he couldn't. Because the lie would hurt too badly. All he could manage, then and now, is sitting next to her. His weight pushed the mattress down, even though hers didn't.

And, then and now, he brushes his fingertips over her eyes, pushing the sweat-tangled curls of her dark hair out of the way. He lifts the weight of his will from her fragile mind, as if that would be enough to fix things. Of course it isn't. The human will is fragile - _so _easy to push over the edge. If a Force-user had to constantly maintain the manipulation of a Compulsion for it to remain effective, no one would ever bother with it. The Sith are, and have always been, good at cost/benefit analysis. Slaves are expendable, or at least they _were, _in the days of the ancient empires. But they've come a little further as a species now. Manipulating people, controlling them through fear, _using _them... of course they still do those things. But outright destroying them, shattering their minds... there is little use for that.

"I... didn't mean it," he chokes out. But even as he says it, he knows the words are a lie. He knew _exactly _what he was doing, and that's why he did it. He'll do _anything _to keep her safe. Even if it's from herself.

He watches her, and he can almost pretend; that when she wakes up, it'll be like it used to be, on the ship they'd never bothered to name, even though they'd joked about it often enough, when there was nothing tearing them apart. They'd been forced together, then. And now, it seems, the galaxy, the Force, the balance that cares nothing for the fragile pieces caught in its wake, pulls them apart.

He _will not _lose her. He will not let her get lost. He draws in a deep breath and slowly lets it out, and watches over her, a silent, sleepless vigil.

* * *

NaNoWriMo 2012. I promise I crossed the 50k line, even though I lost a bunch in editing. As of now, I'm at just over 42k (after dropping down under 36 for a while), and may or may not pull it back up over the bar by the time we're through. The words are written. The hard work of finding the arc of the story and shoving the pieces into place is done. Now I'm just waffling (which usually means "just shut up and post already, karebear!")

As if you couldn't _already_ tell, this story is almost entirely a headtrip, heavy on psychology and short on plot. This should surprise absolutely no one who has ever read anything I've written, ever.


	2. The Strings That Control The System

Cyrrus blinks his eyes open when he feels movement beneath his fingers. Kali rolls over, her fingers flex, clenching and unclenching into a fist. She starts to kick, as she fights against something in her sleep. He grabs her hand and touches her mind, lightly, with the Force. He can't fight the initial surge of hope that rushes through him, the thought that this might be for real, that she might be _better_. But all he feels in the Force is gray confusion and the swirls of grasping, heavy darkness underneath. It's not the first time she's woken up. It doesn't mean she's healed.

He takes a deep breath and wraps Kali, gently, in his arms. "Hey... hey, I've got you," he says softly. He wills his voice not to crack, but it falters anyway, as she shivers close against his body.

"Cyrrus?" she whispers sleepily.

"Yeah," he admits.

She nods, and curls up against him, without protest, without fear. She trusts him. She trusts him even after what he's done, _because _of what he's done. He can't let it stand. He can't live with himself if he does. He shakes her, trying to force her into a more lucid state. Her eyes refuse to focus. Her bloodstream still swims with drugs. "Kali, _look at me_," he insists. No Force compulsion this time. Just the power of the pitch of his voice, the words he knows she'll listen to. He wraps his fingers tight around her wrist, a pinch, a confinement, that the Kali he knows will reflexively push off, and break out of. She only sits there, limply. His stomach sinks. His heart rate speeds up. He trails his thumb down her jawline, and holds her close. She presses her hand over his heart, he can feel the warmth of her touch through the thin fabric of his shirt.

She nuzzles close to him, and he lets his eyes drift closed. For a moment, he lets himself believe in this. Because he knows that's what she needs right now, that doing anything else would destroy her. He'll keep her safe. He'll let her believe in the lie. He insists he's only doing it for her.

His finger idly traces up the inside of her bare arm, leaving goosebumps trailing behind his touch. She recoils and lashes out with a scalding mental attack that leaves him gasping for air, squeezing his eyes shut to block tears that spring up in response to non-physical but _very real _pain. He sucks in a deep breath and opens his eyes to find her curled up in a tight ball, eyeing him warily. She flinches the instant that he moves. And her shirt slides off her shoulder to reveal the mark he _must have _touched, without realizing, without thinking. He curses, inwardly. His eyes trace the branding scar carved deep in the flesh just above the curve of her left breast; above her heart. The Sith mark - Master Cah's mark. Ownership and control very visibly and permanently reinforced through pain.

"Kali, I'm not him," he promises.

But he sees the wild fear in her eyes, and it breaks his heart to know she doesn't believe him. Why should she?

They are back to where they started; hesitant steps and no trust to speak of. And his stupid, ill-advised promise to protect her from the dangers she fights in her own head. Kali doesn't say anything. He supposes he ought to take that as a victory in itself, small though it is. She is no longer actively trying to kill him. He tries to convince himself that this neutral emotionlessness is better than anger and hatred and terror. But the truth is, it feels too close to _death_, like nothing at all. She is flatline of simple responses, and she has to try too hard to reach even those. They don't come from inside her. She is responding to cues society has been feeding her for years now. He pushes past the simple switches and expected reactions; the droid-like shell of existence without soul, the simple lie. He can feel her, pulling at him: her _need_ is like a sucking void and he can lose himself in it. He _is _losing himself in it; losing time, losing any sense of logic or sequence that can see over the crushing waves of pounding emotion and _fear_. He can no longer separate himself from her. He isn't sure he wants to.

It's hard to describe what it feels like, delving into someone's mind with the Force, attempting to heal. It's like putting together a puzzle that has an infinite number of pieces constantly changing shape. There _is _a sense of logic to it, a progression of steps. It takes skill and knowledge as much as that possessed by any expert surgeon. His training - brief though it was - as a field medic _does _help. It helps more that it's _her_, that he and Kali are part of one another. And he can follow her into her deepest fears and secrets and memories, slowly pushing open doors where she lets him. It plays out in images and familiar movements - like lightsaber fights, like the motions of war... And quieter moments too, like holding her in the dark, whispered reassurances, and the questions she constantly asked. What matters the most, as he frantically tries everything he can to break through her barriers and pull _her _out from the layers of Force-created walls are the _emotions_: very real terror and hatred, reinforced by memories and shadows, that are keeping her trapped.

He's heard stories, heard her _talk, _with deadened voice and haunted eyes. But _feeling _it, living it, is so much worse. All he can do is give her something to hold on to, someone to trust. He promised her a long time ago that he would never leave her alone, and he has broken every promise he has ever made in his life since then, but he won't break this one.

Alarms scream in his head as he gently reaches for her. She stops fighting, responding to the gentle lures he sends into her mind. This is not the kind of experiment where mistakes are tolerated. If he does it wrong, if he fucks it up, he could kill her, he could make things worse... (You could kill _yourself_ whispers the nagging human instinct for self-preservation that has been encouraged and forged and honed through decades of Sith training). That voice - that evil, quiet urging - tells him she deserves to suffer if she is weak, that she deserves to die, that he could end it, _should _end it - or worse, that he could take advantage of it - that this is his fault anyway, isn't it?

_ You promised to protect her, didn't you, Cyrrus? _the cruel, sickening whispers insist. She is damaged. The only thing she is capable of doing now is hurting herself, and _she will kill you_.

He pushes away the doubts with a scream that tears from his throat and presses in deeper. He slams against her walls, he squeezes her hand, and he begs her to work with him! "Just once in your fucking life, Kali, I need you! Damn it! Just listen to me, okay? Just _listen_, and follow my voice."

He swears he can see her nodding, though her eyes are once-again closed, her eyes fluttering rapidly under the lids. Her brief burst of activity, like that of a drowning man gasping for air, has ended now. He can still feel her heartbeat under the warm heat of skin where their bodies touch. He can feel it echoing with his own, pounding through his veins. He feels her tugging at his mind. She grabs at him, he follows her, and somehow, he knows, with sudden clarity, that if he does this, he _will _die, or it will destroy him. _It will take everything you are to save her, Cyrrus Morrath_. It is the same whisper telling him not to bother, that it isn't worth it, that she is beyond saving. But she _isn't_. And he ignores the voice. Instead, he nods, and accepts it. He remembers everything he's ever learned about the Force that is life and balance, and he knows, somehow, that he's known this all along, since before he ever met her. And he doesn't care.

He dives into the storm to save her. And it doesn't feel like dying. It feels like coming alive.

He takes one more deep breath and whispers a desperate prayer, and Kali _listens_. For the first time she he started trying, she listens when he begs her to give him a place to start. Through her eyes, he sees the first time they met, and he _remembers _it, clearly, as though no time at all had past.

It's been four years, almost to the day, since he'd approached her carefully in the humming silence of the Scimitar's cockpit in the awkward twilight hours when they'd finally been left alone, with the crowded maze of Coruscant lightyears behind them.

"Kali, are you okay?" he sees himself asking awkwardly. There was nothing _obviously _wrong, but still, she was jittery and tense, constantly moving. She picked up any small object that wasn't bolted down and set it down somewhere else later, after rolling it around in her hand for a few minutes. When he did finally get her to sit down, she constantly shifted position in the small chair, craning her neck to watch the swirling colors of hyperspace, drawing the arcs and lines with her fingers.

"I'm fine," she replies, though she doesn't still her body. Cyrrus nods, fitting himself into the memory. He stops watching it from the outside, becomes part of it again, _feels_ it. He wonders once again if she'd even been aware of the general unease radiating from her in the Force. He wonders if, even then, she'd known he heard her calling for help.

Kali is constantly trying to hide, it's the way she knows how to survive. She doesn't sit still long enough to be trapped by anyone. And their ship was tiny; with nowhere to go. For months, there was only him and her. He'd wondered in that first conversation how long it would be before she would be forced to reveal the secrets she was obviously working so hard to hide. Or how long it would be before she got in under _his_ shields, and forced him to abandon logic and not care anymore. He'd promised himself he wouldn't do that again; he told himself over and over that he'd learned that lesson. But _obviously_ he hadn't. Because here he is doing it again. She'd broken through his shields without even trying to the first time they ever talked.

Cyrrus has learned, in rapid-growth spurts over the years, and slowly, through a long process of connecting fragmented pieces, that part of being Force-sensitive is seeing the arc of the future before it develops, before it can be understood. And he watches through Kali's memory and feels those familiar strings being tugged. He'd watched her then as she tried so hard to pretend that she was not intimidated or completely uncertain of what to do with this mission they'd been given, and he'd known one fact with immediate clarity: she is important - will be important - she _matters_. There's a thing called a shatterpoint - a moment, an object - around which everything revolves and through which everything changes. She is his.

And he hadn't known how yet, he's not sure it matters, but as he watched - pretending he wasn't - while she stuffed her one duffel bug of possessions into the bunk tucked into one of the tiny alcoves nestled in the rear of the ship, he'd known it was the Force that brought them together. Not orders, not their masters, not the mission, not even the skills and personality traits they have that complement each other. It has always been far less logical than any of that. He still sees it as a puzzle, a web he has to untangle, a problem to solve. And the first step was figuring out how to do it when she refused to even _talk _to him. He'd heard rumors and whispers through the temple, and couldn't pin down which ones were true because he'd spent most of his life ignoring the gossip swirling all around him. If he'd paid more attention, it might've given him a clue, a starting point. He set his shoulders and concentrated on piloting the ship, relaxing and dropping, instinctively, into a kind of meditative stance halfway between focused alertness and sleeplike dreaming. The uncertainty and nagging questions roll off him like water. He trusts in the Force. He trusts her to come to him, when she's ready, when she needs to. He'll be waiting.

_"Give me a clue, Kali,"_ he'd said. _"Give me a place to start."_

"What're we looking for out here, really?" she asks, in the memory that still plays within her head. Her voice doesn't startle him; he'd felt her approaching with the Force-sense that never turns off. But he's never been exactly certain what to expect from her. The kind of upbringing they've both had is not exactly conducive to idle conversation.

He leans backward in the chair until his weight nearly sends it toppling backward; he catches himself with careful balance, throwing out his leg to step the fall. He knows what their brief says and he knows what she assumes; he is pretty sure the truth is somewhere in between - the point at which the two intersect. "Have you ever heard of Outbound Flight?"

"Just stories. It's a myth, isn't it?"

"Yeah. So are we, though, right?"

Kali raises an eybrow. "Force-sensitive children stolen from the Empire and raised into 'evil Jedi'? Yeah, I guess we are." If the Sith who trained them were honest about anything, it was that. They were never supposed to exist, their lives were already forfeit, and continued only as long as they continued to be useful. Kali sighs, and settles into the co-pilot's chair once again. Just like before, she immediately begins fidgeting and playing with loose objects. "You ever wonder why they didn't just kill us the way they were supposed to?" she asks, without looking at him.

"Nope." He raises an eyebrow at her confused look. "Oh, come on, Kali! You don't have to know a single thing about Sith history to get it. We're not Sith anyway. Not really. What we are is corrupted and watered down. It's politics. It's all about power. We _are _power, and we give power to the ones who think they can control us."

She glares at him, and he can feel her walls flaring up, fragility hidden behind undeserved anger. He lets it go. He knows it's not his fault she's worried about her master. Which is not even what he _meant _- he was more worried about Palpatine, the self-proclaimed Emperor. They've each only "met" him the one time, as far as he's aware - but the swirling vortex of dark side power around the fragile old man was real enough, especially to children raised in a constant choking black haze of fear and hatred. This was something entirely new, pure Force nibbling away at the man's ability to make rational decisions, guiding his actions... it had frightened Cyrrus, honestly and completely, in a way that nothing else has before or since.

Well, nothing until _now_, he thinks, as he walks the tangled contours of Kali's mind. Kali is not the only one who is trying to escape the shadow of a harsh teacher and a brutal training regime. Master Beladir would tell him to seek the truth, follow the threads of logic, and find the most likely endpoint. And when he looks at Kali, he isn't at all sure that it's possible to save her.

She'd rebel against the very _idea _of course - that her behavior is so damned predictable, or that her fate is something she doesn't have a choice in. It doesn't change the _fact _that he is watching her destroy herself. That he has been since the start.

Her jitteriness is a natural part of her, but it's heightened by the drugs that are nearly always threading through her body: the glitterstim she'd snorted in her quarters and figures he doesn't know about. Images skim unguarded at the forefront of her mind in flickering bursts, broken neon lights in Coruscant's seedy underbelly, a ritual transaction she's far too good at for someone so young. Another footstep on the path. Another place she's leading him.

He is not the first one who's made that assumption, that she's a little girl who needs protecting, who _shouldn't _need the stuff the spicers sling in the streets. One of them: a skinny human kid maybe Cyrrus' age, but otherwise nothing like him, had made that mistake. Luckily for him, although the boy raised an eyebrow, he'd been smart enough not to question her. There's _something_ in her that reads "don't mess with me" even though she isn't stupid enough to crawl the lower levels in Imperial uniform. She's practically a regular down there, which is dangerous in a different way, but she knows she can trust the product - as much as anything in the Invisible Sector can be trusted. She shouldn't even _be _there, on the edges of the boundary line between the human-safe, if still decaying, streets of lower Coruscant, and the free-for-all lawlessness of the "Alien Protection Zone." Any further, and she'd likely end up dead, Imperial uniform or not. Force powers or not, the human body is fragile, and walking the APZ alone is _asking _for trouble. So maybe that's exactly why she does it.

The dealer fumbles for the vials of glitterstim hidden away in his bag and passes a couple of them her way. She pockets them, and nods.

"Look, I don't take credit transfers. Imperial chit doesn't do much down here, you know?"

"You take whatever you get from me and be happy for it," she demands, pushing just a little bit of Force compulsion behind the command, enough to make him stammer and back up. But she gives him the cash he's looking for. She can follow the rules here too. She waits just long enough, reaches out, feels the flicker of his unique Force presence, like a ghost touch, _close, _within range, but behind his own wall, for now. He's all determined concentration, a focused energy she can never hope to match no matter how hard she tries. It doesn't stop her from trying.

She tries more and more often as time passes, and every time it takes more of the drug to make her feel anything. She disappears into her bunk, unwilling or unable - likely some combination of both - to make a real connection. She can feel Cyrrus, always within reach on this tiny ship, and he too is more controlled than she is, _better_.

She flips over onto her stomach with a heavy sigh and fumbles under her bunk for her bag, which contains everything she owns in the galaxy, which isn't much of anything. Her grand fortune includes the lightsaber she pushes past, concentrating _hard _on ignoring, pretending it _isn't _there, that it can't touch her. Buried underneath it along with some old datapads and a few spare sets of close is a simple cloth bag, tied with a drawstring. It clatters reassuringly as she picks it up, wrapping her fingers tight around the smooth curve resting against her palm. She pulls the bag open and withdraws a vial of sparkling black grains of sand: spice. The glitterstim euphoria is almost real, a tiny escape that she can carry in a pocket. A weakness that can be exploited, too. She ignores the _logical _counterarguments and snorts the dose before she can second-guess herself. She swears she can feel the granules pulsing through her system, tiny stings that flush through her blood, feeling like metal and tasting like cinnamon. She wraps herself in the high, the sensation of warmth, and rides it. Her skin flushes, and she can feel the knots of tension within her uncoiling. Her fingers drum a cadence on the wall at her side; the wall that _isn't _connected to Cyrrus's chambers. _He'll know_, logic-voice insists. _Shut up! _she screams at logic-voice. Who cares if he does?

He is not in charge of her - they are equal at least, and he may even be lower in rank than she is - if they are going by the military system and not Sith reckoning, and she is not sure they are going by either. They shouldn't _have to_. Does _everything _have to be a competition?

_Yes,_ whispers the voice of her instinct, the training she's adapted to over years enforcing over and over that the galaxy is made for winners and losers - that you have to be one or the either, that proving strength is the only way to buy continued existence. Power is rewarded; weakness punished - decisively and, often, permanently. She _understands _the system, but it doesn't stop her from trying to escape it. She thought she'd given up on that idealistic hope a long damn time ago, when she was just a crying kid. Instead, she'd just retreated into a careful, incredibly _fragile _system of delusion and compartmentalization. Cyrrus can feel it.

He could _always_ feel her; buzzing like a live wire, like a shaken bottle about to explode, she practically overflows with Force energy, even when sitting still. She breaks his heart, and that had concerned him even then, at the beginning. Before he was locked onto that tiny ship with Kali, he'd figured there was nothing left in him that was _breakable_.

He'd heard stories of her mentors and the job they're grooming her for, and none of them are good. He's watched her throw herself into painful and destructive tailspins since they were _small_. And he'd heard her crying in the night, and pretended he hadn't, for far longer. She's _innocent_ still, that's what bothers him. She'd tries so hard to crush it deep, but he could _see it_ in her, bubbling _so close _to the surface. He'd felt half-dead in the early days of that first mission, but when she was close she _pulled_ at him, the little girl who wanted something better, light, and safety, and home. Now, their positions are reversed, and all he can do is desperately hope she can still respond to whatever flickers of those promises he manages to push through her damaged mental walls. He tells himself that innocence is still there, just deeper, harder to find. He forces himself to keep trying to connect with her until he gets it right. It's worked before.

She was supposed to be asleep, but so was he. He ran his hand across the blueprints scattered in front of him, pressing down on the flimsi with the palm of his hand until it lay flat, and as he worked alone in his tiny quarters through the night, he felt her presence just on the other side of the wall, a focused buzz of concentration, the nearest thing to calm he ever feels from her. He fumbled in the pocket of his off-duty jumpsuit and pulled out an ink pen. And he started to draw. Without thinking. It started as an engineering problem - working on ship designs, lightsaber designs, problems that are easy to solve. Math is simple, and it doesn't take sides. But he couldn't focus enough to work out the numbers, and eventually, he just ended up doodling. Not _drawing_, he's not an artist. He didn't grow up in an environment that's conducive to that sort of purposeless distraction. But still, there's something soothing about moving his hand in careful, spiral lines, letting his mind wander as he tracks the tight circles left behind by the pen. It is its own form of meditation, in a way. He knows there are those who claim the Force can leave visions to those who silence themselves enough to listen for it. Back then, he'd still tried to tell himself he wasn't the type to have a vision, or _want_ one. But he had appreciated the peace, the sense of stability he got from not-thinking. It chased the dreams. It worked for him. Maybe that's why he remembers it now, as he tries every possible thing he can to give Kali the same gift.

He spent the long hours in deep space riding the balance between exhaustion and focus, channeling the energy of the Force to give him an edge where needed. Hours drained away as he tweaked small things and drastically changed others. He took apart his lightsaber and put it back together, he deconstructed weapons in his mind and rebuilt them. He tried to solve binary questions to drown out the turmoil raging in the falsely idyllic-looking galaxy spinning outside in the painted swirl of hyperspace. He worked until his muscles locked and screamed, protesting too many hours hunched over his tiny workbench. Hunger gnawed and chewed at his stomach. His vision swam, his blinks grew longer, his eyelids grew heavy, his eyeballs stung, feeling gritty and irritated. And then he'd force himself to stand, pull out a ration bar and chew on it, barely noticing the bland lack of flavor or the cardboard-like texture. It got nutrients in his system, and that's all that mattered to him. And when the bar was gone and he could cross feeding himself off his task list, completed and checked off with little enthusiasm, he stretched his aching, tired limbs and listened to his joints crack as he rotated his arms and stretched, to give his back and legs something to do. He listened to the silence of the ship, stretching out his awareness and feeling nothing more than the soft pulsing glow of Kali's bright presence nearby.

He told himself even back then not to judge her. They're all entitled to their own vices, aren't they? He reminded himself that she wasn't hurting anyone. Except that the nagging voice in his head continuously insists that _she hurts people all the time_. He tells it to sit down and shut up, because he hurts people too. They're _soldiers_. They never signed up for this anyway, and they _certainly _never pretended to be any kind of moral paragon or role models. Exactly the opposite, actually.

He knows full well how often the short-sighted pundits and narrow-minded civilians littered throughout the galaxy throw around words like "good" and "evil" when they talk about the Sith and the Jedi. In reality, most of them hate and fear _both_, incapable of understanding Force-users as anything other than power-hungry gods. Cyrrus actually likes that interpretation _better_, though it turned out to be dangerously easy to twist. At least it's _fair_.

On the Scimitar when the questions got to be too much and left his mind spinning in circles, he'd sigh and crack stiff knuckles and force himself to stand. The walk to Kali's next-door quarters was maddeningly short, but the few steps were often still the first movement he'd experienced in half a standard day, or sometimes more.

He'd go and knock on her door and call her name, pounding louder and with increasing urgency until she'd respond, usually by screaming at him to go away. And he'd palm the door open, and she'd growl, knowing she couldn't lock him out because the ship recognized them as having equal status in the nonexistent chain of command that determines the protocol for such things.

"I just... wanted to make sure you're okay," he said cautiously, the first time, hesitant but not apologizing. He leaned against the doorjamb and tried – and _failed,_ obviously - to pretend this was just a casual checking-up and not a planned visit or the half-assed intervention it _so _clearly was.

"You wanna spar?" he asked lamely.

"No."

"Kali..."

"Cyrrus, you asked, and I said no! What's the point of even asking?"

When she looked up, her eyes are predictably wild and reddened. He'd never fought someone on a glitterstim high before and he still remembers how he'd wanted to, just to satisfy some crazy kind of academic curiosity.

"You have to practice," he insisted. "Keep your skills sharp."

"Says you."

She rolled out of her rack and dragged her booted foot slowly across one of the scuff marks painting the floor. He noticed the way her fingers tightened around the hilt of the saber clipped to her belt. She rolled her eyes and pushed her way past him to the one open space on the ship large enough for a sparring match to happen. "Happy now?"

Every time they fought, it was quick and brutal. Kali remembers those fights and she pulls him in to re-experience them. He'd asked her for someplace to start, something to fight, and she's giving it to him in the motions and memories that will be familiar to him. He grabs onto it and _pushes_ as sweat pours into Kali's eyes. Her breathing comes in shallow gasps as she studies him. His saber comes in low, and it's easy enough to cut hers upward to block it. She pushes backward with insistent steps, sneaking a glance at his face, trying to judge his intention. He can feel her plan a half-heartbeat before she acts on it, a flashing image of the path of her blade. She rolls easily out of the way of his strikes and chops her lightsaber toward his. Their blades lock in a firework-burst of ozone and electrical discharge, red light bleeding white where the two sabers touch. She loves this. He can feel it. She feels _good _when she loses herself like this, in this small, private space, with just the two of them. It feels familiar and comfortable, like a game. She doesn't have to _think_, just falls into the motions ingrained in her since she was too young to remember a _before_. She'd held a training saber in tiny hands and learned everything she knows about reacting with her body, trusting her passion to keep her alive. The first time she felt powerful was when they gave her a weapon, even if it was little more than a simple stick. A stick in the hands of a preschooler who has been taught to _react _with all of the anger and fear they are capable of, without thought or intention, can cause enough damage to be remembered. There had been bruises and blood, broken bones. Cyrrus tries go easy on her, but she forces him to _fight_. She snaps out her blade and curls the fingers of her off-hand into a loose fist, pushing outward with a deceptively lazy-looking gesture that throws him away from her, sending him crashing against the far wall. Or it _should_, except that he catches himself awkwardly, and stumbles as his weight lands on an ankle that twists underneath him. He winces, but shakes it off and stares her down. "You fight dirty, Kali," he whines.

She laughs. "Fair fights are for suckers," she reminds him. _Never get in one_, is a lesson she learned early and hard. And, technically, this _isn't _one. Cyrrus is larger than her, stronger, and she knows that he's got about ten times as much comfort in lightsaber combat as she does. She carries a blade, of course, they all do. She sweated over creating hers, poured herself into it until a part of her soul is contained within, or at least that's how the story goes. The Force can linger, its power can be held contained in objects and artifacts. That knowledge has driven the Sith through generations, through _millennia. _Kali doesn't believe in it, but at the same time she can't help but wonder if that's why she feels so unsettled every time she touches one specific lightsaber, the one she hides in her bag. Cyrrus can feel a question pulling at him there, another string to follow, but he doesn't go there yet.

He can't, when as he watches, purple-white light ignites in her hand. He thinks he feels a flicker of fear, but he can't tell which of them it's coming from. It pushes back in a feedback loop.

The lightning leaps between her fingers and she throws it outward. And then a wall slams down, a sucking void.

"_Damn you_, Cyrrus."

He shuts his blade and raises his hand in a gesture of surrender. The electric power drains away and leaves them both shaken and cold.

"Did you know what you were doing?" Cyrrus asks harshly, pointedly. "Did you know what would happen if you hit me with that?"

The accusation cuts deep, because she _does_ know: _Jolting current, blinding white hot agony, and screaming. _She's left convulsing in the aftermath, blood pouring over her chin in a steady stream from where she'd bitten her lip without realizing it.

She doesn't remember anymore whether that was punishment or demonstration. Does it matter? Her stomach heaves at the memory of that burning-meat smell, and blackened flesh. A Force-user with rapid-healing can fix the damage fast, but that doesn't make it better. Yet _still_, the _power _that she wields feels good. There is a part of her that _wants _Cyrrus to be afraid. To do to him what someone else has always done to her.

She charges at him, and he blocks. She ducks under, and he comes charging at her, swinging with an uppercut arcing down. She catches it, barely, and pushes up, forcing him backward. He takes a step backward, stabilizes himself, then angles his blade and uses his momentum to snap it downward toward him. He listens to her short, panting breaths, lets his eyes drift closed, tries to feel her in the Force, anticipate her movements. And that is how she catches him offguard. "Sloppy, Cyrrus," she teases, as the sparking ozone clash of their blades presses close enough to his face that he swears he can feel heat. He takes another step as she presses her short-lived advantage. His back jams against the wall. "I'd hardly have survived this long if I couldn't handle myself," Kali reminds him, harshly.

He nods. And he snaps his blade off.

He's lost another round, he still doesn't know what to do. He leans back in his hospital chair, his fingers barely touching her hand as he remembers what happened next. She wiped the sweat out of her eyes and pulled her hair back, not looking at him. "We're done then?" she asked, laughing over her shoulder.

"Yeah," he'd muttered, watching her go. "We're done."


	3. Inquisitor

The wall of rejection and hurt pushes him back, _out_, it burns him and he can't push through it. Cyrrus squeezes his eyes shut and his heart breaks as he is forced to listen to Kali's whines and broken murmurs. He holds her hand tightly in his own and tries to will her to get better, but it doesn't work like that. If it worked like that, he wouldn't be here. _She _wouldn't be here. "Kali," he cries softly. "I don't know what to do. I need you to help me. _I need answers_."

She stirs beneath his touch, but this time, she doesn't respond. He lashes out with a strangled cry of frustration, and _pushes _back, refusing to give up. He won't walk away without getting what he wants. Nothing else matters.

He pounds his fists against the solid barriers of her mind until they weaken, and though doing so _hurts her_ - hurts him, too - he knows of no other option.

_"You're going to tell me what you know." _

Cyrrus blinks, and frowns. His desperation and need for information is like a key, unlocking one of those barriers. Kali's voice surrounds him and he's back in one of those all-encompassing memories, watching, _feeling_. But this is something he's never seen before, something he wasn't there for. But Kali knows it. He can feel the choking spirals of fear and anger wrapping themselves tightly around her, the ragged panic as she recognizes where she is.

It is a darkened room, barely big enough to hold the chair that holds a young human male, held immobile by both physical restraints and a Force cage. Cyrrus can feel its thrumming power because Kali can; it buzzes uncomfortably at the edges of his awareness, a claustrophobic pressure that he cannot shake off.

Kali can pace around the interrogation room, and she does so, but the walls are uncomfortably close. If she stretches her hand out even a little, it will hit the smooth, soundproofed metal. She stops pacing directly in front of her subject. The kid looks up, meeting her eyes with unflinching defiance. Kali smirks. "You don't honestly think you can play that game, do you? And win it? Boy, I know far more than you ever will about the power of the dark side. You have_ no idea_."

His gaze shifts away from hers; just briefly, but she can feel his spike of fear pulsing through the Force. She can _taste_ it. It is tangible, real, enough for her to lick her lips, enough to quicken her breathing. It tastes salty, heavy: like the bread they get from the kitchens after particularly brutal combat training classes, when they need to be loaded up on electrolytes and carbs. It is is a taste she equates with blood and bruises, which is just as well, given the circumstances. Her gaze shifts too, unquestionably breaking the thread of the Force that had connected the two of them, ever so briefly. She reminds herself that this boy has no power over her, no matter how strong or intense his emotions. _She _is in control here. She picks up one of her needles, grabs it seemingly at random from the tray that holds a frighteningly vast collection of tools. But of course, she knows exactly what she is doing. This place is _hers_, she knows every chemical at her disposal, every scalpel and knife. With her other hand, she picks up one of those and flips it between her fingers.

"It doesn't have to be hard," she insists, quietly, with just a hint of Force compulsion behind the soft words. But his eyes narrow, and she feels a thrill of excitement travel up her spine. Of course he won't do things the easy way. Intelligence wouldn't have tossed him her way if he was that easy to break. And if it was _easy_, it wouldn't be fun. She shrugs, casually, and glances pointedly at the IT-O hovering menacingly behind her, in the shadowed corner of the room, where the light doesn't reach. Its carefully-designed-to-be-intimidating buzz vibrates; an unnerving pitch that sounds like artificial, mechanical wasps. She's felt the stings of agony that droid is capable of inflicting; though of course her target has no need to know that.

She knows the droid has worked on him too; she'd know it even if she hadn't watched it happen, by the mechanical precision of the scars left behind. He'd retreated into silence to match the silence of his robotic torturer. It isn't surprising. Most of them do. The droid is _designed_ to be unflinching and untiring; it is not deterred by the trap of compassion and it does not grow more demanding or more forceful, caught in the feedback loop of emotion. It continues adjusting the level of pain it induces in response to carefully calculated heuristics. It is not designed to gain answers; it is not even capable of asking questions. It simply exists to soften prisoners for someone like her to do a different job.

This boy _will_ crack. She can read it in him. He is tired. She checks his file via a hidden visor-access screen flashing over her retina. He's been here for the better part of a week; he is weak, hungry, exhausted, sleep-deprived, dehydrated... he is at the limits of human endurance. Another screen, and she compares his body's statistics against human baseline. He should not even still be able to keep his eyes open. His Force-sensitivity barely registers on her scale, but it is enough to be noticeable in a test of extremes like this one. He has a healing factor - he taps it even if he doesn't realize that's what he's doing. And he has something in him that makes him stubborn enough to resist the kinds of "enhanced interrogation techniques" that are whispered about throughout the galaxy.

He is afraid of her and they both know it, but being afraid is not the same thing as being broken. It's just a step in the process.

She takes another look at him, studies him more closely - he doesn't look like anything special, not really. He looks like the kind of kid she'd see in a mid-level club; unmemorable. But that is most certainly exactly what makes him so good at the job Organa's rebels have recruited him to do. Too bad he had the misfortune of getting caught.

She sets the thin knife back onto its tray, with a bit of reluctance, and takes a step toward the boy. She holds onto the needle, taking a moment to watch the viscous yellow-green liquid contained within bubble up, reflecting back the blood-bright light from the dim lamps set high above their heads. She wraps her hand tightly around the syringe and lets it rest casually at her hip. "Where're you from?" she asks casually. Just making conversation. The boy frowns, and pulls against his bindings; trying - failing, to get away from her. She shrugs. "I'm just _asking_." She knows what the files say anyway: "Alderaan, right? You were at school there."

He doesn't confirm the information with words, but she can read the truth of it in the Force - more reliable than any mechanical indicator. And she sees it in his eyes. "Alderaan's a known haven for dissidents," she tells him, just as steadily. "But you're not making trouble for the Empire, are you?"

"I'm not gonna tell you anything," he insists. His voice is raw, hoarse from screaming.

Kali nods. "Okay," she says simply. "I believe you."

She injects him with the endorphin inhibitor and pain enhancer, then goes to work.

She feeds off his desperation, his grief, his terror, his pain. In the Force, it's red and black and silver-white; she can taste it, touch it, swim in it. It feeds her, fuels her, pulls her through the hours she doesn't bother to count. Her body begins to betray her; she feels her exhaustion in gritty eyes and stumbling footsteps, but she pushes through it and _does her job_. In the end, he doesn't give her much.

She feels the moment when he _stops being_, the whisper of his last breath and the ripping explosion in the Force, the _absence_ of a life. But that is a kind of power too.

Master Cah will be pissed, but he won't blame her. Much. There may be a small punishment, but nothing she won't be able to handle. She wipes the blade clean, tosses the bloodstained cloth into the biohazard recycler, calls for a droid to dispose of the body.

And then she crawls into her quarters to drop into a deep, drug-induced sleep.

She wakes up early, after too few hours. Fatigue crawls behind her eyelids, like insects. She squeezes her eyes tightly shut, but her room is already pitch black - distraction is not the problem. Or at least, not any distraction she is capable of blocking out; the stimuli that are keeping her awake come from inside her. Still, she forces herself to calm down; concentrates on slowing her breathing to a steady, deep, meditative pace. She can feel the life buzzing all around her: it is impossible to escape on Coruscant, no matter how hard her masters might try to convince them that nothing can reach in from outside their bubble of concrete walls to touch them. Her heart beats, slow and steady, in time with her breathing, in time with the rhythms of life on the city-planet. Buried in plexiglass and circuits, tangled up in darkness and artificial light, but still _there_.

_"The Force is always..." _whispers memory and guilt, in a familiar voice.

"Shut up," she growls.

She hears nothing else, but she can still feel the insistent prickles beneath her skin, the familiar nausea churning in her stomach. It's been a _long _time - months, maybe years - since the emotional poisons that flood her system after an interrogation session have been enough to make her vomit. Her body still protests it, screams at her, tries to get rid of the overwhelming toxins. She can control it though. She had a damned good teacher. And she tells herself it's worth it, and that it wouldn't matter if it wasn't. She doesn't get to make that call.

Now that she's found enough balance to feel stable, she pulls herself out of bed and grabs a shirt, to pull over her head. She steps into a pair of reassuringly heavy pants, clips her lightsaber to her belt, runs through her morning routine: stretches and exercises to strengthen her body, because even if she's not a fighter all, her intelligence and alternative tactics won't mean a damned thing if she can't keep herself alive in a galaxy that is actively _at war. _The motion and activity feels good, wakes her up, and gives her the illusion of control, lets her lie to herself; lets her pretend that if she runs fast enough, far enough, she could really get somewhere.

You'd think the Unknown Regions would be far enough, but the quiet emptiness of space only closed her in more tightly. Cyrrus had known since their first night on the Scimitar that she fought nightmares, even if he is only now beginning to uncover the specifics of the dreams that haunted her. Like him, she'd struggled to keep herself awake through the long nights of their hyperspace jumps. Alone in the dark, she asked questions of servers and screens.

She went through every scrap of information she could access; and finding access to _more_ rapidly became an obsession. She smuggled a datapad into her bunk, or hidden crawlspaces and unused storage closets, or any place she could find to navigate the ever-narrowing chokepoints that guard the HoloNet. She'd never stopped asking questions of her teachers, battering away at their defenses and infuriating them with unceasing dissections of the flaws in their logic, but she had eventually learned that the answers she really wanted would never come from them. The HoloNet was her perfect puzzle, scaled to her level and never boring. It didn't give her what she really wanted either, just more questions. But every answer she unlocked was another tool in the arsenal she spent a lifetime collecting.

Like Cyrrus, Kali has always known that, according to all the records, she's just another war orphan. Coruscant houses tens of thousands of them, maybe millions. Maybe half of them are documented. The Empire holds on to the ones they can; unwilling to waste resources even if they come in the form of living beings. Most of the non-humans are culled from Invisec and dumped into the galaxy's newly reignited slave trade. Humans are trained in "boarding schools" that are simply poorly-disguised prisons; theirs is special only in that it is built to contain and train Force-sensitives, and, as such, is even more impossible to escape from. Not that there is anywhere worth going - the Emperor has made his ultimatum clear: you are either with him or against him; you either work for him or you die. It doesn't matter, it has _never_ mattered, if you are only twelve years old. Or three.

They've both seen the vids of Operation Knightfall, of course. They are replayed year after year on every screen on its anniversary. Kali has been through the HoloNet enough to know that the vids they show do not tell the real story: of course, no one ought to be surprised by that. Order 66 allowed for provisions to "reprocess" the young children who may not yet have been fully loyal to the Jedi - but in those early days, still _now _- the public, brainwashed by the vids and the constant messages of fear and paranoia, draw no distinction. Shoot first, ask questions later. _"When in doubt..."_ The Empire doesn't handle doubt very well.

"Cyrrus, do you remember your family?"

He frowns, memory tickling at him now that he realizes she'd been searching for the answer for much longer than he'd thought.

Her question had seemed incredibly loud in the silence of the cockpit. He held her gaze for half a second that stretched on forever before nodding. "A little," he finally admitted, with a soft whisper. "Why?"

Kali shrugged, spinning around in the chair. She caught herself with a rough jolt before the centrifugal motion carried her around the circle a second time. She kicked at the base of the console. "No reason," she lied, in a soft monotone.

The blinking lights of the monitor held her attention. Little things like this often did, it used to get her in trouble when they were young. Cyrrus remembers. He'd been _unsettled _when the masters chastised her for her lack of focus. Weakness wasn't tolerated, and their teachers burned it out; quickly, harshly, and _permanently_. So he reached out to her with warmth and comfort, a gentle touch through the Force; images of a reassuring squeeze of her shoulder, a hand wiping away her tears, a hug... when he did it, she _pushed _him away, and curled up behind her wall, where nothing could touch her, especially not him. She's been pushing him away for far longer than she'd ever let him in. Those first days they'd spent on the ship, they didn't talk unless it was required. Except for every now and then, like when she'd ask a hesitant question, probing for information, looking for reassurance while still refusing to look weak.

"Kali, do you remember yours?"

"What?"

"Your family. Do you remember them?"

"No," she admitted.

It shouldn't _matter_. But it bothered her still, to search and find nothing, and he could sense that churning anxiety. They both know how the Empire works. It has always been a near-certainty that her parents, if she'd ever had any, are dead, or wishing that they were.

"Maybe that's better," he finally said, softly. It was a half-assed attempt at comfort, but also the truth.

"Tell me about yours," she insisted, as though she hadn't heard him.

She'd made it sound like a command and he'd just stared at her, for a long moment, debating whether or not to refuse. But then he nodded. "You know we're not _so _different from the Jedi?"

Kali blinked, and didn't respond. It seemed like an radically off topic question, and a dangerous one at that. But she held her breath, and waited, because they'd both already known the truth of it and sensed its importance. "That's what I know," he told her, drumming his fingers rapidly against the console. "About my family. My father was a Jedi."

"But they -"

"Weren't allowed to have children. No. But people do a lot of things that aren't allowed, don't they?" He sighed, a deep inhalation that bought him time to think. Kali had recognized the stalling maneuver but let him get away with it, because she'd known she wasn't any good at a lot of the things that he is; things like stalling, sitting still, meditating. Trusting that everything - that _anything _- would work out okay.

"Must be nice," she muttered. "Knowing who they were, that they were special."

"Kali, whatever family I had was _slaughtered_. Cut down by the same people who..."

"Have you ever killed anyone?"

The sudden change in the direction of the conversation gave him whiplash. "What?"

"Have you?" she insisted.

"I... not _directly_, no."

She nodded, and immediately found something else to look at. She really is _terrible _at hiding her feelings. She radiates guilt more obviously than a toddler. Or maybe just to him.

"You have," he said softly. It wasn't a question then and it isn't now. She'd shrugged, but of course she had. She _has_, she's killed more than one person and she feels guilty about it, so whatever they may have thought about crushing the humanity out of her, whatever test she was supposed to have passed... it wasn't enough. She cares just as much as he does - maybe more - about the things they've seen, the things they're forced to do. The guilt swallows her. It pulls her away from him even now, even though he insists as he follows her through these dark memories that he doesn't _care_, that he isn't judging her any more now than he had that first night when they sat whispering in the darkness of the Scimitar's cockpit.

"She didn't even fight me, Cyrrus. When I killed her. She looked me right in the eye and said '_I'm __sorry_.' Like it was _her _fault. She didn't even try to hide."

It doesn't even take trying to make those particular memories come rushing back. For Kali, it is suddenly _real _again, in every sense. It _hurts_.

Her fingers close tightly around the blade that still feels unfamiliar in her hands; too heavy, unbalanced, the finger grips too widely spaced. The metal is colder and sharper than she is used to, somehow. Even the light seems wrong, far too bright, for someone whose vision had adjusted to the unique dim glow of the red blades of the Sith.

"Do it," Master Cah orders.

Kali nods, her eyes catching the direct, confrontational _challenge_ in the gaze of the woman who kneels at her feet. She is paralyzed, held fast by an invisible bond of Force energy strung into place by Master Cah. Kali can feel it even if she can't see it, a familiar weight pressing close around her ribcage. The Jedi's face is painted with blood, pouring red from a shallow graze above her temple. It looks shockingly gory reflected back in the green light. Kali holds the blade and takes a hesitant step forward. She turns back and glances over her shoulder. In true Inquisitor fashion, _questions_ rise to the forefront of her mind. But the insistence of Master Cah's command cannot be denied. _Doubt is a luxury no servant of the Empire can afford. _Especially not an Inquisitor. Doubt will lead you astray. _Doubt _is what killed the Jedi. _Be certain_. "Do it," growls her Master, and the words are heavy with the reminder of the inevitable punishment for failure. She can feel it in phantom pain that lights up ghost pathways in her brain. She gasps sharply and is suddenly focused by the involuntary mewling coming from the pathetic Jedi waiting to die by her hand. This woman must be able to feel it too. Kali sets her jaw and swings the blade.

And Master Cah's hand settles on her shoulder, warm and gentle. "You did well, my girl," he says. She sneaks a glance up to his face. It is set in the same serious, composed mask it always is, but she can feel something underneath it, nonetheless. She can hear it in his voice, and she is certain she's not imagining it; there is grief there, a deep sense of something important lost. She frowns, chewing it over. This Jedi is not the first he's ever killed. She's watched him - _felt him_ - at work in the questioning cells. _Doubt is a luxury_. Uncertain of what else to do, she snaps off the blade and offers him the hilt.

He shakes his head. "No, Kali. The weapon is yours." A trophy, and a reminder. Her fingers tighten around the blade, and she nods. Somehow, it feels like a _good_ thing.

At least, it had at the time. She'd wanted so badly for him to be proud of her, she'd needed, _desperately_, to prove herself to him. Now, she curls away from Cyrrus, ashamed of her doubt and her weakness even more than she feels guilty for what she'd done.

He doesn't press the issue, but he reaches out with the familiar reassuring touch she remembers from when they'd been kids. She shrugs him off. The voices follow her, as she shivers in a cold that's more than physical. Cyrrus tucks the hospital blanket carefully around her, and she shifts away from his touch, murmuring wordless protests.

"Maybe, if things had been different, you could've been taken in by the Jedi." It's a familiar doubt and a familiar voice, her own, but not her own.

As Cyrrus follows the path Kali lays out for him, he recognizes that she has been haunted by guilt in a far more real way than he'd ever realized. The nightmares that she fought off and tried to silence with drugs were never just simple memories. The Force can bridge the barrier between life and death; the cut of a lightsaber has never been enough to silence its messengers.

"Maybe if things had been different, I'd be _dead_," Kali spits, out loud. Because they mean the same thing, don't they?

"Kali, it shouldn't have been this way."

"What do you know?" The Jedi frowns, and what Kali reads from her isn't the fear she'd have expected, not even the adrenaline-fueled determination of a woman resigned to death while fighting for her life. It's sadness. "I'm not a _child_!" Kali screams, lashing out, determined to prove her power, to prove herself _right_. It's a defensive, unthinking reaction, but that hardly matters when it fills her with the rush of emotion, passion; anger that is nonsensical but easy to feed. She lashes out at the woman, pushing her backward, _hard_. The air is charged with hazy, long-time-ago memories. They hardly matter anymore.

"Do you remember this place, Kali? This night?"

Kali crosses her arms over her chest and glares at the Jedi, noncommittal. It shouldn't be possible for a ghost to get impatient, but Tanny somehow manages. Kali tries to wait her out, but she loses. She flinches and lashes out as the unsubstantial touch sends a chill like blowing wind or puffs of air across the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. She shakes the woman off. Her fingers instinctively clench tightly around the hilt of a lightsaber she isn't holding.

Cyrrus holds his breath, because he can feel the same surreal presence, wrapping itself around him, like the Force-ghost is pushing him forward, bolstering his ability to gently break through Kali's walls. As he watches, a little girl huddles on a bed, one he recognizes as being from the Sith Temple dorms. The child takes in huge, heaving breaths, gasping for air around sobs that wrack her tiny body. Tanny shakes her head and sits down next to the the little girl. Her insubstantial form leaves nothing behind; no impression in the mattress, no sign she's there at all.

Kali insists that there is nothing particularly special about this night; this bed, or this child. Cyrrus knows she's wrong, and he feels his heart ripping in two, wrenched by how easily Kali dismisses her own suffering. She is wounded enough to believe she deserves this, she's heard enough voices tell her over enough years that this is what makes her strong. Her loneliness and fear cuts through him like a knife, it swallows him.

"Is this the power you defend so fervently?" the Jedi asks sadly, because Cyrrus can't find the words to speak. "Children terrorized into submission."

Kali shrugs. "What's your point?"

That night was hardly the worst of what she endured. Kids cry. So what? She'd survived all of it, stronger. Strong enough to live. And to _kill_.

It's been a long time since she'd been afraid, in this place. Lost, yes. Confused. Lonely. She was one of the youngest and smallest Force-sensitive children the Empire dug up in their treasure hunts on the Outer Rim backwaters. Their net widens with every passing year, until no one slips through the cracks. She'd gotten used to being ignored, fending for herself. They all did, Cyrrus too. They are all Coruscant's children now; the street-crawlers hidden in the shadows of the skyscrapers, scrounging for every scrap they can claim. The Sith may have brought them here, but they have to earn survival. They were thrown together into cage matches and basically ignored. Food was provided, water, a place to sleep... _usually_. But though their physical needs were provided for, the constant choking pressure of the dark side sapped their life. Theirs is a world built and fueled by fear and anger.

Kali had known it from the moment the Empire claimed her, when that world became _her world._ The backhand slap cracked across her jaw and the man's strong arm held hers tightly, so that she couldn't escape. She wriggled and screamed and kicked. This one didn't wear white armor, like the ones who had taken her from home. He wore a uniform, with shiny buttons. It was all black, and his hair was black too. But more than that, what Kali remembers is that he'd been _angry_, more than her father had ever been. And her father had never hit her. The pain throbbed in her cheek. The man _threw _her, hard against the wall. Her head _cracked_ against the hard metal. And then she could _feel _something, pressing down on her _brain_, something heavy, something dark. Her eyes slipped closed, responding to the insistent unspoken command.

She woke up alone, fear crawling through every nerve and blood vessel in her body, tangible; thick trails of darkness like slimy ooze that weighed her down and choked her from the inside out and made it hard to breathe. She _hurt_, inside and out. Her jaw felt tender. Her head pounded with dull throbbing pain and she shivered in the cold of space and curled her knees up to her chest and told herself she wouldn't be afraid. It's a lie, it was then and it is now, but she'd screamed it over and over again in her mind as her teeth chattered and tears started to fall. She sniffled and buried her head in her arm and told herself to _stop crying_. It didn't work. She hadn't learned how to control herself yet. She was only four years old.

She hasn't learned to control herself _still_. She scowls at the ghost of a dead Jedi haunting her. "You're not _real_," she insists stubbornly.

The woman snorts, running her hand over the smooth fabric of Kali's hospital sheets. "You can _feel_ me. Reach out, if you don't believe me."

"You're _dead_," Kali demands. She pointedly refuses to stretch out with her Force senses. Cyrrus isn't even certain she could. He has no idea how much control she does or does not have, in this broken state. But she doesn't need to anyway. The woman radiates power that they can both feel. She'd have to. It's all she is, anymore. "I know you're dead," Kali whispers, a mantra she repeats over and over, proof of her rightness and her guilt simultaneously, the only thing she has to cling to when everything is darkness and uncertainty.

"Oh, but Kali... death is not a boundary. Not for some."

"I was more powerful than you when I was sixteen. I was more powerful than you when I was _six_."

"Is that what you think?"

"What do _you _know about power? All your talk about prophecies and balance, you never saw _this _coming. You could've..."

What? Could've saved her? Who says she needs saving?

"I do," Cyrrus whispers into the overwhelming silence. "Kali, you're not alone."

Kali either doesn't hear him or is too far gone to care. She lets her anger pulse out and overwhelm the doubts of her own mind, lets it bleed into a sharp edge that cuts the ghostly visitor as sharply as _the lightsaber blade cutting deep through her flesh, charred bone, a smell like lightning-ozone-meat-__sickening_, _and a body falling to the floor, collapsing at her feet. _Her heart pounds in her chest, drowning out all other sound. And she feels _nothing_. Sudden absence and emptiness, and the _snap _of the green-light blade dying in her hand, plunging her into shadows and grey-light.

When no one else was watching, Kali held Tanny's lightsaber in her hand and turned it over and over, feeling its familiar grooves and contours. The rubber is sticky in her hand, and rubbing off in some places. There are scars and dents in the metal; this weapon was real, this weapon was _used_. Jedi Generals fought in the Clone Wars. Her Jedi maybe had, too. For all that she knows about the woman, the same repetitive nightmare, the haunting guilt she buries, the questions she refuses to answer, she _doesn't know_ a whole lot more. She has a name, but not much else. The Jedi was stolen from whatever world she'd been born on before she could remember the name of the place; either no one bothered to record it, or the information was lost, like so much else, in the Purge. Kali was born in the quiet aftermath of that turmoil. She should have been safe, but instead she is chased by burning bodies, ash and smoke, blood and blasterfire, and none of it's like in the vids, it's all _real_, it all hurts. The War is over everywhere but here.

"_Everyone_ has a weakness, Kali," Tanny tells her gently, and Cyrrus realizes he is listening too, still holding his breath. "Everyone has a trigger. A fear. Something they want more than anything else in the galaxy. Something they will -"

"What, kill for?" Kali's bitter laugh turns into an angry growl. Even in her head, she can't kill the Jedi enough to get her to _leave her the fuck alone. _"I killed _you_, in case you hadn't noticed!" she snaps.

Tanny shakes her head, sadly. "_Die_ for," she insists. "It's easy to kill."

"How would you know?"

The Jedi sighs. "Do you honestly think I never killed anyone, Kali? I _deserved _the death you gave me." She shrugs. "Or, who knows? If _you're _any indication, maybe I didn't."

"What the _fuck_? Is _that _why you're haunting me? Your _own _guilty conscience."

"We're more alike than you want to admit. We always have been."

Kali laughs - a bitter, ironic harsh grating noise that cuts through the silence. "That means you've got the dark side in you too, huh? All that emotion the Jedi tried so fucking hard to pretend doesn't exist?"

"It was never about pretending it doesn't exist. It was about not letting it _control _us."

"Yeah, because that worked out so damned well for you, didn't it?"

"Are you really going to argue with _me_ about that? A liar is the _only _thing you are."

"Shut up!"

Tanny shrugs. "Suit yourself."

Kali wonders if she really is starting to win, against the hallucinations in her own mind, against the voices in her head. "Who'd you kill?" she finally asks, after a long moment.

"What?"

"You said you've killed people. You said it was _easy. _Who'd you kill?"

"Kali, the Jedi led a _war_. My actions led to the death of _thousands_. Millions, maybe."

"Indirectly."

"You think that doesn't count?"

In that instant, an image flashed through Kali's head - the explosion of a planet, the screaming shock of its aftermath, one _moment_ that united every Force-user in the galaxy, one fucking _second _that didn't care about _sides_. It's a dark wave that swallows her whole.


	4. Called Out In The Dark

The wave overwhelmed Cyrrus too, punching through his sleep and jolting him to sudden, complete awareness. His heart hammered in his chest, his head hurt, he could feel a sucking-void _absence _that set his teeth on edge, like zero-g. But it wasn't anything physical. This was a wound in the Force, a jagged cut that tore into his soul. It should have been enough to paralyze him.

It almost did, until he heard screaming. He reacted without thinking, grabbing his lightsaber and flying from the bed toward the source of the sound, and the overwhelming surge of emotion he could feel coming from the small room next to his. He palmed the door open and kept his eyes open, reflexively searching for something to _fight_.

But all he saw was Kali, huddled into a tiny ball on the bed. He sat down next to her, careful to keep his movements gentle and non-threatening. He knew what she was feeling because he felt it too. But in her, that raw emptiness twisted itself into blind terror that chilled him to the core.

"Kali?" he whispered, reaching out to comfort her.

"Don't touch me!" she screamed, and before his fingers could brush against her skin, she _pushed_ out with all the Force she could summon, sending him flying away from her. There was a collision and a sickening crunch_. _The sound broke through the thick fog of Kali's confusion, and the haunting emptiness. Cyrrus' pain was raw, and real, and it overwhelmed the silence like a flood. If she was _really _a Sith, as strong as they wanted her to be, she wouldn't _care_ about hurting other people. People get hurt because they're _weak_, and pain makes them stronger. Or it breaks them. Either way, it's not her fault. Still, it isn't Cyrrus' fault either, not really. It's not like he _asked _for this (_You never asked for it either_, whispers the voice inside her head, always, until she tells it to _shut the fuck up_, and smashes it down, deep inside her, until she can almost pretend it isn't there). She chewed on her lower lip and avoided making eye contact with Cyrrus and mumbled something that was halfway toward an apology, and intentionally not loud enough to hear.

"What?"

"Said 'm sorry I hurt you. I didn't... you know... it was an accident." Cyrrus tried to shrug - not thinking, obviously - and the instant he tried to move his shoulder he froze and winced and bit back a curse. A red haze of insistent pain radiated from his broken arm. "I can... help," she amended, weakly. Cyrrus stared up at her with fever-bright eyes. Beads of sweat poured down his face. He grit his teeth, and nodded, sagging against the doorframe. "It'll hurt," she told him, truth and apology rolled into one.

"I know," he replied. His voice was harsh and rough, enough to startle her. She shook it off and took a deep breath, nodding to him until he did the same. And then she pushed him against the wall to hold him stable as she wrenched his dislocated shoulder into place. It _did _hurt. Kali could hear it in the choked-back scream he just barely contained, but more importantly, she _felt _it in the Force, an empathic link between them that nearly overwhelmed her with its strength. The connection weakened but didn't break when she let go of him, and she heard the roar of his heavy breathing in her ears. I was the first time they had ever linked like that, feeling each other's emotions until they were almost part of the same body. This thing he's doing now is the same, only possible because they've done it before. Because she isn't scared of him anymore, she'll let him in.

"Sorry," she'd muttered, refusing to look at him. "I didn't... I wasn't trying to hurt you."

"Kali, are _you _okay?"

"What?"

"I just... I felt it too," he mumbled. She nodded, agreeing and answering his question, both. "That... disturbance," Cyrrus continued, probing quietly. "But, it's worse for you. Whatever you were dreaming..." He winced as he rolled his shoulder and flexed his arm, to convince himself that the damage wasn't permanent. Kali scowled at him and hated herself because she couldn't help thinking about about how to use that injury to her advantage in a fight. Cyrrus had grown up in the same classes she did, and she could tell, when she looked up at him, that he was thinking about it too. Knowing that did not make her feel any better. Cyrrus drew her gaze with the same insistent _presence _that has pulled her in over and over again despite all better judgement since they _met. _"You _hurt_, Kali," he said simply. He didn't let her disagree.

_Fuck you, Cyrrus_, she wanted to say. It has always driven her fucking crazy how easily he can burrow under her walls. He can break through the cracks with gently seeking fingers, slow and patient. He _stays, _even when she pushes him away. "It's nothing," she told him instead, entirely unconvincingly. "Just bad memories. _Old _bad memories." (Is there any other kind?) He nodded, accepting the lie without believing it. "You don't know anything about me, Cyrrus," she demanded harshly.

He didn't bother fighting her. "Yeah, I do," he said simply.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

_Tell me what you want, that I may take it from you_," he quoted easily. His eyes were hard as he stared her down, the words themselves are a challenge. They come from the Book of Anger, the compendium of all Sith lore, knowledge compiled over generations. She's read it too. Obviously. The truth of the accusation he was dancing around clenched in her stomach. _Tell me what you want..._

He never asked her what she was _really _looking for, those nights when she stayed up, keeping herself awake popping stimulants, scouring the Holonet, looking for fragments of information, clues and erased back-trails. It shouldn't _matter _where she comes from. But there was always that part of her, deep inside, impossible to kill, that _cared_. It was a weakness, and she knew it and so did he, but he didn't call her out on it, although he should have.

He traced his thumb along her jawline, gently, awkwardly, with his off-hand. She flinched away from him and he pulled back as though scalded. He stuffed his hand into his pocket, but still refused to look away from her. "Kali, there's no shame in it," he demanded. "Have a goal. Go get what you want."

She shook her head. "It's not a _goal_, Cyrrus, it's just a fantasy. A stupid kids' story."

For all she knows, still, the cover story the soldiers gave her all those years ago is true: she's just a war orphan who was too damned unlucky to die.

"Okay," he agreed. She frowned. He is not supposed to _give her _what she wants. He smirked as she growled and curled her fingers into a tight fist. "Force, Kali. Not everything has to be a fight!"

"Yeah? You sure about that?" She could see the worry behind his dark eyes. "Cyrrus, what did you mean?" she whispered. "That you could feel it too?"

He blinked, and, if possible, his frown deepened even further as, in that moment, they _connected,_ sharing vision and memory, fragmented images and broken screams: a planet exploding in a ball of fire, dissolving to instant vapor. Destruction and death on an incomprehensible scale.

An icy knot tangled in Kali's stomach, because she'd immediately understood that this was something real. More than nightmares and old memories, more than guilt tangled up in drug-fueled hallucinations. This was something she had never confronted, and she didn't know how to respond. She did the same thing she always does: she bottled it up, stuffed it down deep inside, filed it away and labeled it as more questions to pick at later, more strings to untangle. She wasn't sure if she _wanted _to find the answers, but she wasn't sure how to do anything else either. She reached for the datapad tossed hastily onto the floor hours earlier, and found it half under the bed. A few quick swipes of her finger logged her into the HoloNet. She'd expected to have to search for answers, but the images assaulted her in high-definition before she could even begin to know what she was looking at or for. Whatever this was, it wasn't something that could be hidden from the Imperial News Network, only spun. The broadcast _said _nothing of substance, but it was no less threatening for all that. Kali watched helplessly as the same damned repeating vid looped itself over and over in her hands, proclaiming the glory of the Empire for all to see.

She glanced at Cyrrus. He stared down at the small screen wrapped tightly in her grasp without betraying any visible reaction. Even the feelings she got from him in the Force were deceptively placid, a calm stillness above a deep and dangerous stream. She'd always known he had a slow-burning fuse, and a sense of justice and the rules of war that couldn't be warped by the Empire.

And this thing that they watched - this thing they _felt - _it broke _all _the rules, it crossed every line. She watched the video loop again, and again. She watched through the silent, shaky cam-work from some Destroyer out there that saw through its camera eye when a planet shattered into a nothing more than a meteor shower in one burst of bright light. This is Alderaan.

She thought of the boy who died without giving her a word. She remembered his spittle and blood mixing as he seized beneath the lightning dancing between her fingers, along the trail of pathways carved with scapels through his flesh.

"This can't be real," she insisted. This can't be all that's left.

"What?"

"This bulletin. It's... propaganda, right?"

"Why would they make it up?"

"Why _wouldn't_ they?"

"Did you know about the project?" Cyrrus asked her. She swallowed, hard. His voice was hard, accusatory, _angry_. She could feel it radiating out from him. It was easy, in that moment, to remember where he came from, what he is. But Kali squared her shoulders and told herself that she'd been less afraid of far more intimidating people than _him. _She chose to focus on his wounded shoulder and reminded herself that she has power of her own.

"What, this Death Star thing?" she asked, forcing herself to sound casual, like they were simply making idle conversation. Cyrrus nodded coldly. "No," she admitted. It was true, she knew nothing, not even a whisper. She could've found it, if she'd been looking. Money trails, personnel deployments... a project that big couldn't be hidden. But her job had always been to look _outward_ for hidden threats. And she'd never been interested in what the military got up to anyway. "Cyrrus, they destroyed a _planet_," she whispered, finally, as the cold shock of reality hit her, suddenly, too late, and all at once. A million voices crying out, suddenly silenced. Who the fuck cares about _sides_? "_Billions _of lives."

"We."

"What?"

"_We_," he repeated. "We destroyed a planet. _Fear will keep the local systems in line._"

Cyrrus held her gaze, and she could feel a ripple of... something, contained under his calm surface. She recognized it: the echo, cascading down through years, of the terror honed and weaponized and amplified through the Force; demonstration and punishment, when they were small. She hadn't felt it since then; not so clear and uncomplicated.

She frowned, squirmed, wished she had some way of pretending she didn't know this was coming (You _didn't, _screams the voice in her head; the voice of reason, the voice of plausible deniability, the voice of loyalty, the voice of 'why the fuck should you care anyway?') But the truth is, though she never did know the details; she was not surprised. How could she have been? _"Fear will keep the local systems in line." __Fear__. _The Empire is _built_ on a platform of fear; using it as a control and a tool, an inexhaustible method of intimidation. She has felt it from both sides, been trained by it, honed by it, it is a part of her, continuously fueled until it became a living thing. Fear is planted in tiny seeds on a small scale, and spread in waves of destruction; chain reactions that linger and leave nothing behind them but dead space: wastelands where nothing grows. And shattered shards, drifting in the silence.

She closes her eyes and tries to convince herself she doesn't feel the darkness that settles in the pit of her belly, holding tight and refusing to let go. She lets her gaze dart toward Cyrrus, but she holds her breath and doesn't ask the question that's screaming at the edges of her consciousness, battering at the shields she refuses to drop completely, though she can _feel them_, cracking at the edges: _Do you think we're on the right side?_

She didn't ask him then, but now as they walk through this tangled landscape of memory and emotion together, she asks. Cyrrus keeps trying. The question and its accompanying doubt shock him into new clarity, a new way forward. It's the first time she's flat-out admitted her uncertainty, put it into simple words, out loud. He holds her close to him, pressed against his chest, safe in his arms as she lashes out, struggling, still fighting against ghosts he can't see, and shaking. In her head, it's the same as those times he'd held her when she came down from a glitterstim high in a brutal crash.

She glares at him, daring him to say something; to judge her, or punish her. He knows she thinks she deserves punishment and his stomach twists when he imagines the lessons her master must've taught. She's got other scars, less brutally obvious than the carved brand marking her as one of Cah's personal brand of Sith. He knows all of them, has traced them when she slept in the nights when she let him stay. He never asked about them, and won't, but he doesn't need to ask, really, does he? He's no medical expert, but he's taken enough field classes to recognize the basics - burns and breaks, and the marks they leave behind... he knows the basics of interrogation techniques too, and he saw the haunted darkness reflected in her eyes whenever she skirted the issue of the specifics of what she does. But he's seen that now, too. And it only makes him more unsettled, more afraid. She's too damned _good _at it not to know _exactly _what she's doing, how it feels, why it _works_. Cyrrus understands fear - terror and loss, you don't become a Sith if you don't. But she understands _breaking_. Sometimes, there are things that you can't fix. It won't stop him from trying though.

"You are so very fucking _stubborn_, you son of a bitch!" Kali accuses, her voice barely more than a whisper, forced out through a violent coughing fit as the shaking begins to subside.

"Me?"

He remembers when they were kids: the way she'd hide in a closet for the whole damned day to get out of going to a class she didn't like; the way she'd stare down their most intimidating instructors and take their punishments without flinching. The way she learned to catch the terror and manipulations and crush them somewhere inside her, to _fuel _her. She has _always _been better at that than he is. She is fucking _scary _when she tries.

And she is telling him that _he _is stubborn.

She smiles, reading the general direction of his thoughts in the burst of confusion and amusement he must be giving off in the Force. "You _are_," she insists. In a different way than she is, a more careful, more controlled way. "You think you can fix everything. Control everything."

He frowns.

Does he?

"You always have," she demands.

His stomach tightens as she laughs, and her fingers claw at his chest. It feels like it used to, and he tries to push her away because he can't do this. But Kali grabs his arm and won't let him break away, and her eyes are bright and clear – lucid – for this moment, and he has no idea how long that will last. "Cyrrus, please," she whines, and he shivers and shoves her away because it is like the first time.

And just like that time, he shakes his head. "No, Kali," he whispers. His voice is soft but there is no room in it for argument. "I can't."

She pounds her fist against his chest – hard enough to hurt both of them, and he tangles his fingers into her hair and brushes a gentle kiss over her lips and closes his eyes, pushing with the clarity of his own memory, this emotional conduit that makes her remember and feel. Maybe this is what brings her back to him.

Her blood surges like fire through her body, she is driven crazy by a desperate need to fill the emptiness with _something. _It is that passion that drives her through life, full-throttle, always on. She takes what she wants, and in the darkness of space as they drifted in the uncharted boundaries at the edge of the galaxy chasing rumors and stories, what she wanted was warmth. Sex and heat and feeling good; and he knew he could give her that. And it wouldn't have to mean anything, but their bodies in the darkness could give her what she wanted, just for a little while. And maybe what she needed, too: arms wrapped tightly around her, whispered words of comfort when she felt like she was all alone.

It would be a lie to say he didn't want it too, at least a little bit. He'd been watching her since they were kids, after all, building a kind of fragile connection over years. But he'd pulled away from her contact all the same. She only wrapped her fingers around his arm more tightly, _pushing _past his hesitant worries, emboldened by the taste of him and the heat of their closeness. Fire sparked inside her belly, and below that, motion and need drove her absolutely fucking crazy, which Cyrrus knew because the same thing was happening to him. She squirmed against his body, teasing him with her touch, laughing as she let her fingers creep along his skin. "This is not the first time I've done this, moron," she whispered, into his ear.

He shoved her backward, not letting her go, exactly, but not giving her what she wanted either. She growled in frustration and narrowed her eyes, as she tried to catch what the flicker across his features meant. She could _sense_ a vague kind of disapproval from him, a sadness, because he couldn't use words to tell her to stop and he wasn't even sure he wanted her to anyway.

She froze momentarily, but she still refused to be ignored. "Come on, Cyrrus. You're not seriously telling me this is the first time _you've _done this?"

He shook his head, after a long pause, and she blew out the breath she'd been holding. _That_ would be way too much pressure that she doesn't want the responsibility for. She sighed, letting go of the sleeveless shirt she was halfway through pulling over her head, so that the fabric fell back down to cover her belly. "Tell me about her," she urged. She reached up to her shoulder and began to massage away the tight knots of tension coiled there. Without thinking, Cyrrus covered her hand with his. She glanced up, then dropped her arm and let him take care of her. She moaned as he kneaded her flesh with strong fingers.

Her eyes flickered to the datapad sitting on the smooth metal shelf near the head of her bed. Its "active connection" light still flashed reassuringly, in a steady pulse. Cyrrus followed her gaze and ducked his head, because that object itself was enough to remind him of what they'd felt, and what it meant, and he knew that Kali was just trying to pretend for however long she could that they were far enough away out there that they could run from it, but he couldn't do that.

She shifted backward on the bed, adjusting her weight and center of balance so that her feet barely touched the floor, and she nodded to him. She sent the invitation to him in the Force too, a gentle compulsion. He recognized the manipulation - _obviously –_ but he pushed it away easily and said nothing. He sat down at the foot of the bed and curled one booted foot underneath his body, stretching the other one out lazily. And he shook his head, massaging the bridge of his nose. Kali watched, as his fingers pushed upward along the path of his sinuses with increasing pressure. She could feel the low buzz in his Force signature because he wasn't bothering to dull it or disguise it. It isn't pain, not _quite, _but something familiar all the same: stress, a lingering headache that won't go away, a low-grade nausea. Kali kills it with drinks, with drugs, with bursts of energy that don't require _thought_. He wonders if that might help him.

She shrugged, trying to make it seem casual instead of calculated, but that just makes him even more aware of it. There is no such thing as a casual conversation with Kali, it's her _job_ to break people down until they answer her questions. "If you want to, I mean," she said, softly. "It doesn't matter."

He blew out a breath. "I will, Kali. I promise. Just... not now, okay?" He'd do it if she forced him. She immediately recognized the fact that he was _asking_ and as they stared into each other's eyes he swore he could feel her heartbeat speeding up as instinct began to take over, actions and reactions honed by years of holding a needle in her hands.

But she shook her head and didn't push it. "Sure. Whatever, Cyrrus."

She reached for the datapad, but he grabbed her arm, flinching backward as she recoiled and responded without thinking, shoving him away hard.

"Sorry," he murmured. "I just..."

"Yeah." She took a few heartbeats of quiet concentration to force her breathing to slow into a normal rhythm, and she pulled herself away from him, crossing the small room so that they could no longer touch. "I'm sorry too."

Maybe the one good thing about Alderaan was that they were recalled to Coruscant in its aftermath. No more being trapped together on that ship that was so small it contained them like a jail cell. No more being distracted. No more questions to dance around and not answer.

That's what he told himself then, anyway. He thinks about that now and he isn't sure whether to laugh or cry.

He had kept his promise to tell her later, to answer her questions, even though he'd known damn well that she never expected him to. Even then, he wouldn't break his promises to her. Maybe he thought it was important that she know, maybe he just couldn't keep it bottled anymore. But the night before they landed in Imperial City, she joined him in the cockpit, jittery as usual. And afraid to go home, but he would never tell her that he knew that.

He was curled up with his arms wrapped loosely around his knees, held in tightly, close to his body. His shifted his weight just enough to send the pilot's chair spinning in a slow circle. He scratched his nose lightly with his thumb. And he gathered in a deep breath, and let it out. "How old were you, your first mission?"

Kali frowned, then shook her head insistently. "No way, Cyrrus. You don't get to make this about me. Not today."

He smirked. "'I'm the one asking the questions here.'? Seriously, Kali?" He raised an eyebrow, on the edge of laughing. She held his gaze with that same stubborn and determined focus, and he eventually caved, though he didn't flinch.

In the quiet of the ship's night cycle - lit only by the red-tinted emergency lights - he went somewhere else completely, to a world that he had to struggle to recapture as it _was_, when all he had to hold onto were the crystal-sharp images of its utter desolation, seared into his memory. He scrambled to grab hold of _anything_ he could: a whisper, a laugh. He could feel her hair brushing against the curve of his jaw when they kissed, feather soft. Her eyes were like the summer storms of the nearby lake, a dark grey that brightened with flecks of green, or gold, in the right light. They'd sat for _hours _on the grassy knolls; not speaking, barely touching. Just _living_, in a world where the Force sang in every atom; every cell of her body, every blade of grass, every mote of light...

"I was fifteen, Kali." He snuck a glance at her out of the corner of his eye, and she nodded. The darkness in her eyes, the set of her jaw, the way she sat curled up tighter around herself - consciously or not – told him that she understood what he was getting at. Now, he has the missing pieces, or at least some of them. She'd killed someone and lost a piece of her soul when she was fifteen; they are both haunted by regret, the things they thought they had to do.

Kali raised an eyebrow and tried - and failed - to settle back into the seat. It was hard to get comfortable in those chairs. It was hard to get comfortable on that _ship_. When it came down to it, it was little more than a packing crate drifting through space. Close quarters, no escape. Cyrrus scowled and reached out for the throttle without even realizing what he was doing. Holding onto the thing gave him the illusion of control, even though they both knew they wouldn't be breaking blind out of hyperspace.

He clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. He hadn't needed the details of her story to _feel _the important bits in those moments when she sought him out with uncertain apologies or pulses of terror in the night. Or the more common moments, like this one, when she radiated a stomach-churning guilt. She wrapped her dark hair around her finger in tight loops and stared across the small space of the cockpit, looking at him without looking at him. He may not have needed details, but she did. She may have looked like a little girl, but she'd been through the same trials he had, and crossing that line means that she _is _an Inquisitor, she will always pull for every tiny, seemingly meaningless scrap of information she can possibly grasp: "If you _know_, then you can control."

That's what they try to teach her, she's told him that, straight up.

Sometimes Cyrrus wonders what it means that he doesn't seem to want to control everything.

_Bullshit_, whispers the voice of his own guilt. _You want to control __everything_. You want the galaxy to fit within your neat boxes and blueprints, you want everything to be a simple mechanical problem, something you can _fix_.

He'd pushed himself up and started walking, toward the ship's tiny sparring area. There was barely enough room for the two of them to move around, but it was still the largest space they had, offering the most freedom of movement, and motion helped Cyrrus to silence that nagging voice and remind himself that he _trusts_ Kali. He answers her questions _because_ he trusts her.

"You know what it's like, on an infiltration mission," he said, keeping his voice carefully neutral. "You get... close, to people. Become part of their lives, part of their world... And it was different, in this place. This planet, Kali, it was so _alive _with the Force. So much a part of the people there."

"Haruun Kel?" she asked.

He raised an eyebrow, surprised by the speed with which she'd thrown out the name. It's not easily accessible anymore, and was never commonly known in the first place. He nodded slowly.

"A downlander clan," he explained. The words got easier to recite when he imagined it as a simple briefing; a fact-based, step-by-step rehashing of events. No attachment. "... But they were just as strong in the Force as anybody else on the planet. They... accepted me. Without hesitation, without question. They told me they could feel the truth of who I am, through the Force."

He isn't certain what scares him more: the thought that they were wrong, or the possibility that they were _right_. Because he'd dropped every shield he had and revealed _everything_, let himself trust even as he _screamed _that she shouldn't trust him and in the end, not a single fucking moment of it mattered. "There was this... girl."

"You loved her?" Kali asked sardonically. As though she couldn't believe it, or simply didn't understand what she was asking. How could she? Sith training quenches that part of you, with brutal violence and cold efficiency. And what the Temple didn't kill, the Empire will, in the kind of missions they send them out on, which is exactly the _point_. They are _assets_, nothing more. Ripped from home to be used.

He hadn't known what love was either, until Ketani. He may not, still. But he can try. He'll keep trying even as it kills him.

"She was..." he sighed, knowing exactly how the words sounded, but also knowing that he had to tell the truth no matter how lame, unbelievable, and straight out of a kid's fairy tale it seemed. "She was _real_," he told Kali. "Honest. _Bright_. You... remind me of her sometimes."

She snorted. "You're kidding, right?"

He sighed and tossed one of the practice balls against the wall, caught it idly as it bounced back. "Not _all _the time, obviously. _You_ try too hard to crush it."

"Cyrrus -"

He held a hand up, to stop her before she got too far in her protests. "I _know_," he insisted. "I don't _blame _you, Kali, it's the only smart thing to do."

"You think I'm weak though? That I'm _faking _it."

"_No_. Fuck no, are you even _listening_? I know you're strong because you _aren't _faking it. No matter how much you _try_ to crush it, you can't hide the truth of what you feel." Kali used the Force to pull the ball close to her and sent it spinning in tight circles around her forearm that she only half paid attention too. It looked like she was ignoring him, but Cyrrus knew she wasn't. "She didn't try to crush it. She didn't have to try."

"And what happened to her?"

"Kali..."

"No, I'm serious, Cyrrus. _What happened to her?_"

She launched the question at him as a weapon; sharp and dark, heavy with the weight of the answer they both already knew.

"She'd dead," Cyrrus told her flatly. "They all are. A threat to the stability of the greater order. But not anymore."

He sucked in a breath, and it was so shaky that Kali must have immediately realized he was on the verge of crying. He wouldn't, and they both knew it, because neither of them acknowledge pain anymore, at least not voluntarily. You crush it out because you have to.

"You really loved her," she murmured.

He nodded.

The ball spun out of Kali's control the instant she stopped focusing on it. It bounced hard to the floor and skittered away until it ran out of momentum.

"How did you... you know, know?"

"That I loved her?"

Kali shrugged and kicked her toe against the baseboard of the wall. Her boots left black scuffs along the white surface. She glanced back up at him. "What love feels like," she clarified, her voice barely louder than a whisper. "How do you know?"

He didn't answer right away. Instead he reached out for her and grabbed her hand so tightly that every instinct in her flared up and screamed at her to run away, so loudly that he could hear the vibrating echoes of those voices in the Force. She bit her lip and fought the urge to squirm. She couldn't resist the impulse entirely, but she managed to contain it to nothing more than her usual jittery hyperawareness.

And when he reached out to trace his thumb down her cheek, she slowed her breathing in tandem with his. And when he placed his hand on her chest, right above the place where her heart pulsed, loud and steady, she found herself nodding, lulled into a sense of safety by his presence and his touch. They'd both known it was a sense she'd never felt with anyone else. He hadn't either, not like this, not so strong.

Cyrrus closed his eyes and sent out a probing touch in the Force, a feeling that was something like satisfaction - contentment - wrapped in caring and the _promise _that he would never do anything to hurt her, never let anything happen to her.

The intensity of the emotion was so tangible it hurt. They could taste it, like the taste of blood when you bite your lip, mixed with the overly sticky sweet aftertaste of too much cake. Pain and pleasure, mixed together in a swirling vortex.

"That's how you know?" she whispered, needlessly.

"Yeah, Kali. That's how you know."

"And you..."

"I made her a promise, Kali. The same promise I'm making you, if you..." he trailed off, aware, suddenly, of just how much he's laid bare, without ever asking her if the feeling could come close to being reciprocated, without _caring _if it could or not. He stumbled past the awkward question, reading her uncertainty and acceptance all wrapped up together in the Force and knowing he'd send her fleeing if he pushed it. Now, she knew how he felt and the next move had to be hers. And he went back to just telling a story. "I made her a promise and in the end it all crumpled into a lie. So I don't blame you, if you don't trust me. You really fucking _shouldn't_."

Kali untangled her fingers from his and pushed him to the ground, straddled him. He thought she was aiming for his lips, his shirt... but her fingers wound up at his throat, resting gently over his adam's apple. "Do you trust me?" she hissed, her voice low in his ear. He let his eyes slip closed, and he nodded, knowing that she'd read the answer in his movement more than any words he might have been able to choke out. He always trusts her. He _shouldn't, _but he does.

Kali suddenly let go of him, leaving him frustrated and gasping for breath as he scrambled to a sitting position.

She sat back and stared him down. "That's how you know," she growled, wiping the sweat from her face. He nodded, completely and utterly dumbfounded.


	5. Peace Is A Lie

Cyrrus tries to tell himself now, as his heart pounds in his chest and his breathing grows shallow in response to the intensity of that shared memory, that these two things are not the same thing, that the stories do not have to end the same way, that the promise he made does not have to be a lie. For one thing, he has known Kali forever and knows her on a level that can't possibly be matched by some girl he'd met barely a handful of weeks before he killed her - _you didn't kill her_, whisper the insistent voices in his head, the _logical _voices that he tries so hard to rely on and cultivate, but at always, in _this _situation, those voices are defeated by the completely illogical guilt he can't shake, the certainty that _yes, he did_. Even if he didn't pull the trigger. He could've warned her, he could've stopped them, he _knew _what he was doing, he knew why he was there, and he'll be making up for this for the rest of his life.

He is still trying to make up for it now, as he tucks another loose strand of Kali's hair behind her ear and hugs her close against his chest. She shifts and rests against his body. He brushes his lips over the top of her head, and whispers nonsense promises that he isn't sure he'll ever be able to keep. All he can feel, as he does this, is the overwhelming weight of guilt. This is someone else he loves, broken because he failed. She's still alive. Cyrrus repeats the words in a comforting litany because it's the only hope he can cling to. Despite everything he has done to her and everything she's been through, she is still alive. Damaged, but she's pulled through so many horrors in her life, she will not give up now. It's just not in her. She's just hiding. He's found her before, helped her before, _healed _her. He can do it again, if she'll let him.

He follows her down the winding, tangled pathways of her mind, searching for familiar ground. When he finds it, it's in the pounding, pulsing bass of a club, music that gets into her blood, under her skin. She revels in it, dances in the high, and knocks back drink after drink until her constantly screaming senses dull to a pleasant fuzz. She can still feel the crowd in the Force, a frenetic kind of energy that mostly sends back bright, sharper reflections of the emotions she desperately tries to fit into: overall, the effect is a dull kind of happiness, created by high bursts of glee and abandon from the couples in love, the spacers celebrating a job, the shift-workers of the Coruscant low levels who look forward to places like these as the only escape from the monotonous drudgery of the day-to-day.

She rides the high, unwilling and unable to sit still. It's easy to get lost here, just one of _billions_, hypnotized by bright lights with all logic and worry blasted out by loud music. She moves with muscles toned and trained by years of lightsaber practice and combat training. She breathes fast and shallow. Her head feels heavy, and her thoughts are slowed, if not completely erased, by the piercing, all-consuming dance mixes. She finds the rhythm easily, anticipates the moves of the people around her with an instinct that flows without effort; unlocked by alcohol, lowered inhibitions, a willingness to use the Force without fear. This is where she feels free, unburdened. No demands, no expectations, no past and no future, no _questions_. Just the moment. The... _Jedi-ness _of the statement is so beautifully ironic that it leads her to dissolve completely into a fit of giggles.

She could always drive a speeder fine even with the deadly cocktail that kept most of Imp. City cops on the payroll (and dreading their jobs) running through her veins; they all could. It's one of the benefits of being what they are. Her steps were unsteady when she watched the club's lights wink out after last call; the world spun wildly as she laughed, dangerously close to the collapsing guardrails that have sent countless unlucky, unfortunate bastards plummeting to their doom. She pulled herself away from the edge, trusting the Force to catch her. It did.

She drove to the mid-level apartment where Cyrrus was staying, because her only alternative was returning to the suite Master Cah maintains in the hidden-in-plain-sight headquarters of Imperial Intelligence. Their first night back on Coruscant, she refused to go back there.

Cyrrus should've been surprised by her turning up on his doorstep, but he wasn't. Even through the hazy clouds the drugs drew over her perception through the Force, his concern for her was obvious. Kali smiled. "Didn't know you cared."

It was an outright lie, obviously. She wouldn't have come here if she didn't _know_, with absolute certainty, that she could trust him. She'd spent the night in far worse places, both intentionally and unwillingly. But after months alone in the dead space of the Unknown Regions, she literally did not know what to do without him. And the stims - purposely - lowered her inhibitions. He was always telling her to _trust him_, to just _let go_. So she did. The simplicity of it made her laugh, an erratic, unsteady giggle that matched her shaky footsteps.

Cyrrus caught her, and guided her to the bantha hide couch. "Kali, what were you thinking?" he asked.

"Nuthin'" she insisted, as she clawed frantically at his shirt, before she could lose her nerve and before he could stop her. It was perhaps the most truthful she had ever been. The one word contained within it all of her reasons and wants: escape, complete freedom. Thinking nothing. Feeling nothing.

He pushed her away, not forcefully, but seriously. Firmly. She untangled her fingers from the buttons of his military jacket, and sagged against his strong chest, feeling the lines of his muscles even through the fabric. "You smell good," she told him.

"I... what?"

"You _do_. Like... I dunno... trees or something." Which should have been impossible. The whole time she'd known him they'd been on a _spaceship_, the very definition of the middle of kriffing nowhere. The unbelievably high towers of Coruscant aren't any better, when it comes to the availability of trees.

"Yeah..." Cyrrus mumbled. The second he trailed off, she honed in on the deflection like a laser, and reached out to yank hard at the fleeting impressions he projected: gradient greens and thick, soupy brown. Trees. And warm sunlight, not the artificial, always-cold weather-controlled gray light they get on Coruscant. There were other things; _emotions_, their strongest ties, even though they are the easiest to rip away. There was happiness, and a pure bright burst of light. And, even stronger, an unmistakable sense of loss.

"Is that where you're from?"

"No," he admitted, honestly. He shook his head. "Kali, it doesn't even matter. It happened a long time ago."

She shrugged. Not long enough ago that it prevented him from buying their soap, or whatever. Still, even through the haze of not-thinking, not-caring, there was _something _important about this mysterious _not-here_ planet. _It happened a long time ago. _

Her head snapped up as she realized what it is: Haruun Kel, the girl he'd maybe strength of his attachment to her washed the last of the buzz out of her blood.

Now, more than ever, she wanted his touch. She needed to trust someone. She was jealous, and she _needed him, _at the same time.

"Cyrrus..." she moaned, clawing for him, clutching for his arm, pulling him closer to her, any part of his body that she could reach. She shivered in his arms, coming down from the high. He helped her strip out of her sweat soaked clothing, until she was left in nothing but her underwear and a sleeveless, thin-strapped camisole. His quarters were kept comfortably warm, far more than the dorms where they'd grown up; but still, in her current, nearly-naked state, with her body still screaming in the absence of the chemicals that had been keeping her flushed and feverish, she shivered.

"Kali." He didn't say anything else, nothing but her name. But she could feel the intensity of his worry bleeding out through the Force, the sudden cold of his shock, like being plunged into an icy pool.

"_What?_"

In response, he just reached out, gently, like someone might do with a startled animal, and traced the mark above her heart; the scar, branded deep. His fingers ran over the circle and spikes of the Sith Emblem. For her, it's a mark of ownership, not belonging. The heat of his touch flushed through her; the strength of his revulsion crashed over her and pulled her under. She threw him backward, pushing him away with her shoulder.

"It doesn't even matter, right, Cyrrus?" she repeated bitterly, twisting the meaning of his words and launching them back in his direction.

Cyrrus dropped his touch. He pulled away from her as though he'd been scalded. But his words, whispered in her ear, in that deep, gravelly _serious _voice, were just as forceful: "It _does _matter, Kali."

She didn't want to fight him. She especially didn't want to fight about _this_. She curled up against his body and rested her head against his heart. His fingers trailed over her naked skin. She shivered in his arms. His fingers left a gentle white imprint on her flesh, claiming her as his. Under his protection. "Come on, Kali," he whispered, guiding her gently toward the shower. The water pounded down against her scalp. She rubbed the soap over her body, sliding the smooth bubbles over her skin.

"Kali?"

"Mmm?"

Cyrrus hesitated, and she realized it must have been because the scent of her covered in that same plant-based soap that had triggered those strong memories in him. She swiped at his bare skin, he wasn't wearing a shirt, and with soap-covered fingers she traced a teasing path along the curve of his muscles, highlighted by the artificial raindrops slowly falling down those trails. She could feel his heart beating underneath her touch.

Cyrrus snapped the water off, abruptly, without a word. She stumbled after him, still soaking. He wrapped her in a towel: one of those huge, fluffy white things that come from luxury hotels. She smiled lazily and nuzzled into it. She crawled over him and looped her leg around his hip. He _pushed _her away, physically, and with the Force, leaving her sulking and shaking with desire that had no outlet. "Kali, _stop_."

The urgency of his command froze her. His touch made it even worse. He began to knead at her her neck, and shoulders, unknotting the tension contained there. "I'm not mad at you," he whispered. She shrugged. He didn't say anything else. She could feel the highwire tension of his hesitation and uncertainty. He hovered on the outside edges of her walls, knowing how she'd likely react to a perceived attack. He was afraid of her.

"It does matter," Cyrrus repeated, and though he did not let go of her, his touch was carefully, _pointedly_, chaste. It was _infuriating. _"Kali, I'm not him," Cyrrus insisted. He tucked her a stray lock of her hair behind her ear, and she was aware of nothing so much as his _closeness_. He brushed his lips across hers, softly, gently. But then he pulled away, despite her reaching out to him, physically and through the Force. "I won't take advantage of you. Not like this."

The words, the out-loud admission of what she'd come here running _from_ sapped the rest of the strength from her. Cyrrus wrapped his arm around her, and it felt solid and real. And it mattered_. _

He held a steaming mug of caf to her lips and she swallowed it down in choking, searing gasps. Tangles of wet hair clung to her face. She relaxed against his body, feeling safe.

Cyrrus watched her sleep. She looked so much younger and more vulnerable in these moments. He knew full well, even then, that she'd kill him if she knew he thought of her that way. But _of course_ she knew.

He'd wanted so badly to _protect _her. He can't watch her get hurt anymore. Cyrrus starts to believe that Kali has always been right, about his ingrained need to control. Kali had never tried to control anything. For her, it was enough to survive the galaxy that tried to control _her_, as she struggled to resist, with every fiber of her being, the hooks they planted inside her mind, refusing torise to their bait, no matter what. Cyrrus understands that, he had seen it in her, known as he watched, before he could articulate it, that this stubborn will to survive _is her_. It is everything that makes her who she is. Knowing that is what made him capable of breaking her. He knew exactly what buttons to push. He has that knowledge, along with one other person in the entire galaxy. And he's been avoiding that confrontation. They _both _have, maybe. But he asked her to show him what to do, where the breaks are, the things he needs to fix. And this is where it all began.

Kali knew who Master Aran Cah was, of course she did. The Sith Temple she'd lived in for her whole life was _very_ insular; a tiny, tight-knit community. And they'd been studied for years, _every_ action was analyzed. And he, in particular, had been watching her. She watched him, just a dark-robed man standing just inside the doorway, out of the corner of her eye. He pretended to be unimportant and uninterested in what was going on, but Kali could somehow feel his interest in her despite all that.

She sat perched on the edge of the hard metallic gymnasium bench, waiting for her turn on the sparring mat. She flipped the training saber from hand to hand, faster and faster, until its solid smacks against the palms of her hands actually began to hurt. She winced, reflexively, at the hard cracking sound of someone's head slamming, full velocity, into the hard floor of their training ground. Her eyes swept the fighting ring with just enough attention to get an idea of who was winning and how much longer the match between the dark-haired human boy and the Twi'lek might last. It was the human on the ground; not immobilized, but clearly in pain. And that didn't surprise her in the least. Aliens didn't last long up here in the Empire. The only reason this one hadn't been kicked to the slavers was because his innate potential was enough to make their Sith Masters certain he was worth keeping. He was cruel, violent, and _strong_, physically and in the Force. He laughed at causing pain and crushed the weak beneath his heel.

She despised him. They hated each another since he locked her in a closet when she was five years old. The resulting fight had landed them both in the medical bay under the care of the Sith's brutal resalvaged med. droid, a rusty tin can that believed in neither anesthesia nor painkillers. After one or two visits to that sick bay, most of them stopped bothering with any treatment beyond what they were capable of teaching themselves, drawing on the Force for power, and using the pain to make them stronger.

The years since then she'd mostly spent biding her time, avoiding closed-in spaces where his greater physical strength and sheer brutality would give him the advantage.

Which is exactly the reason why their teachers forced them together when they were old enough to be chosen as apprentices. Fucking sadists.

Kali drew in a deep breath and stepped out onto the mat, letting her eyes flicker once more to the silent, searching Inquisitor who came looking for an apprentice. Looking specifically, at her. She rubbed her hands together and picked up the training sword.

And then she stopped thinking. She stopped _caring_, and took advantage of her faster speed, greater agility, and all out fearlessness. And _she_ wasn't tired, she hadn't gone all-out for a whole earlier fight, one that he had dragged on intentionally for several minutes longer than necessary.

It wasn't a simple, clean win, because they never were. She _hurt_, a lot. But she got away without any broken bones, by tripping him up, getting in under his reach and lashing out with hits to sensitive places. The Twi'lek anatomy isn't much different from a human's, so she knew what to aim for. She paralyzed him for brief but critical spaces of time; his defenses against fully mental attacks channeled through the Force are pathetically weak. She could do better when she was an untrained five-year-old. It's one of the things that kept her alive for so long; that stupid _stubbornness_, an absolute refusal to back down. That, and a good sense of timing have always gotten her out of these kinds of forced cage matches as quickly as she could possibly manage. She didn't incapacitate him this time, but she won. She straddled him, keeping him pinned, with her training saber pressed against his throat. She pushed down hard, choking him. The pressure of the heavy metal bar cut off his ability to pull in oxygen. She tickled him with little, teasing sparks of lightning, and laughed, and pushed down harder. She knew she could do it. She could kill him... she could prove once and for all that she's _not _to be taken advantage of.

"Stop." The voice of the Saber Master was sharp and dangerous, an unquestionable command, cutting through the haze of her emotion, freezing her. She recognized what was happening and shook off the temporary paralysis and pushed down harder, drawing strength from her passion, her fear and her hatred.

Until she went flying, landing hard against the bare concrete wall, her hand still flexing around the throat of her opponent, no longer within her reach.

"Apprentice, you will _not _disobey the direct orders of your superiors again, _do you understand_?"

She nodded, her thoughts clouded and dull. The familiar compulsion of dark energy has always been hard to shake even when it was recognizable. She glanced up at the combat trainer and smirked. They _both _knew she was lying. But disobedience was expected, especially from her, after so many years. It was only a different kind of power struggle.

She expected the punishing slap and didn't bother dodging it. The blood pouring from her split lip was hardly distinguishable from the souvenirs of the fight. She could still taste the lightning, the rush of Force energy pulsing through her, noticeable in the heightened awareness that left her charged and jittery. She rubbed her arm across her face - it came back bloody - and spit. Her throat burned with thirst, but there was no water accessible nearby. She knew she'd push through the discomfort easily enough.

She shoved her way out of Master Alkun's grip, testing every boundary, certain he wouldn't risk the political fallout of making an issue of it. Her attitude had landed her in trouble for years. But she glanced up at Master Aran Cah, the Inquisitor, and noticed the lift of his eyebrows, the small smile quirking at his lips.

He ran his eyes over her, and she stood her ground, cleaning herself as best she could with just a gym towel. She'd learned over the years that it's better just to pretend they're not there, that they're not watching. It's better to pretend she's isn't a slave to their whims. So she pretended that her twelve-year-old life did not hang on the balance of this man's choice.

"You're a scrawny little thing, aren't you?" Master Cah asked. He rested his hand on her shoulder, pulling her close to him. She could feel the crawling spiders of his probing touch at the boundaries of her thoughts. She pushed back, lashing out against the attack - so similar to the one she'd launched against the Twi'lek boy - and she shrugged him off, shrinking back, wrapping her arms tightly around herself as though that could protect her. But her anger still flared bright, and he laughed, a cold staccato burst of sound that was the furthest thing from comforting.

He smiled, revealing perfectly straight white teeth that somehow looked like they belonged behind the Imperial uniform. His hair was longer than military regulation, well on the way to gray. Some of it fell into his eyes when he shook his head, curling into loose coils beaded with sweat. Kali scowled when she saw that: it's not like he was the one that was fighting. He's old enough to be her father; if she'd ever had or wanted one. Kali's fingers tightened around the grip of her training saber and she glared at him.

There were some of the Sith who would not have responded well to direct challenge. But they wouldn't respond well to a wilting flower either. She'd known he'd come here to watch her, specifically, because he thought she was worth something. She'd proven herself over and over again through the years. Half a decade had passed since she'd watched a classmate die because he'd cried at the wrong moment. Since then, she'd always been able to shut down the tears, to pull strength and desperate passion enough to keep her standing, fighting, _surviving_.

_Peace is a lie, there is only passion.  
Through passion, I gain strength.  
Through strength, victory.  
Through victory, my chains are broken.  
The Force shall free me._

She stood in front of him and didn't flinch as he probed the walls of her mind, sifting and crawling. A bead of sweat trailed down her back. Her muscles ached. She stood perfectly still, and looked directly into his eyes, unwilling, _unable_, to break contact. "You fight ferociously, little one," he murmured.

In the blinding artificial daylight in the training gym deep in Coruscant's towers, she shivered, and bit her lip, and caught herself before her weakness doomed her. She steadied herself with the reminder that she was holding a _weapon_ - even if it was only a dull one; a practice blade. She shook her head and ignored the questions pounding at her brain like a slow headache just beginning to light up. She tried to convince herself that she was just biding her time. She _wasn't_ scared. The old man laughed, all the more so when she glared at him.

"_What?!_" she snapped. He lifted an eyebrow and sent a cuff of Force energy slamming across her shoulder. She swallowed hard, and a heartbeat stretched into eternity, but she didn't stumble, or flinch, or apologize. She stood her ground. Her eyes sparkled with unquenchable _curiosity_, and she didn't even _care_ that she was opening herself to another hit, playing right into his hands. She steeled herself as he put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed tightly. With his other hand, he drew her chin up so that she was looking him directly in the eye.

"Do you know what an Inquisitor is, Kali?"

She pulled himself out of his grasp, crossed her arms over her chest, and stared him down. "You torture people," she said softly, with a hint of accusation.

"Does that frighten you?"

"No," she lied.

But even though her voice didn't falter, she knew she wasn't fooling him.

Master Aran Cah did not deny her accusation. He did not admit guilt either. Why would he? There aren't any rules in the galaxy except that the only beings who deserve to survive are the ones who claim power for themselves. It is a lie to claim otherwise; a delusion of the weak.

"Is that all that you think we are?"

_"We?" _she asked, raising an eyebrow of her own now.

Master Cah snorted. "An Inquisitor is someone who asks questions," he replied smoothly. "It's as simple as that, and as difficult. It's our job to find the truth."

"Does that mean I passed?" she asked, softly.

His hand reached out, lightning swift, to close tightly around her throat. He threw her to the ground just as quickly. She landed hard, she was _barely_ able to catch herself and tuck her body in to a roll, enough to disperse the kinetic energy and ward off most of the pain. She threw out her arm to hold her weight, and concentrated on the scuffed-up floor tiles - hard floor, like everywhere else - there were no soft mats in their gym, there never had been. Not even for the youngest kids.

Time ticked by. It _crawled _by. Nothing moved. She heard nothing but the beating of her own heart and her ragged, shaky breaths. Her muscles were heavy with fatigue, she was _exhausted_.

And she could feel Master Cah looming over her. He neither moved nor says a word until she glanced up, aware even as she did it that it was a concession. She curled her knees up to her chest, and admitted her weakness. It didn't _matter _anymore.

She felt _nothing _from him in the Force, as the pain throbbed and seared through her jawline. No anger. She narrowed her eyes and studied him, but she couldn't find a single hint that he'd reacted at all. "Don't be impertinent, child," he growled. "You have so much learn."

She could feel the weight of his presence, the pressure of his touch, an insistence _crushing_ her, pounding at her brain. She _pushed _him off, refused to bend. She _would not_ kneel before him.

She concentrated on breathing instead. Her inhalations and exhalations growing shallower as she struggled for air. Eventually, the crushing pressure on her ribcage subsided. She ran her fingers over her raw throat, though she knew there wouldn't be any bruises or physical marks of any kind. She scowled at him, refusing to react to the blatant provocation. She could be patient too. She could be intelligent. She could bide her time.

He nodded; a tiny gesture of approval. "Get cleaned up, girl."

He turned and walked away without another word, without glancing back. She couldn't feel any discernible pulse or probe for him that might have indicated that he was testing her, watching to see if she'd follow his orders. But there was no release of pressure either; the heavy darkness that choked this place, this _planet_, and everyone on it, stuck close, watching eyes and a visceral _shadow_, even when she was alone.

She combed her fingers through her sweaty, tangled hair, and headed for the showers. She felt worlds better when she was clean, and dry. She suited up in a fresh uniform, modeled off the off-duty jumpers of the Imperial military they're technically a part of, though a secret part, kept hidden and removed from the official hierarchy. She traced the scrape down her arm as she walked, painting her pale skin with the blood. She knew she should've cleaned it up, but she didn't. The bright red gash and the stains left on her fingertips reminded her - and, more importantly, those always watching her, always _judging _her - that she's far tougher than she looks, able to handle pain and keep moving.

"Oh, come now," Master Cah sneered, as he pulled the memory from her, laughing at her insistence that she could somehow disentangle herself from him. "You're no different than I am, child. I made you. Everything you are is _from_ me." Kali shook her head, twisting and thrashing to pull away from him, but of course the plastic restraints digging deep into her flesh made that impossible.

Cyrrus' heart sinks, recognizing where he is. That same torture chamber where he'd watched Kali kill. Only now, it's her staring up at him with dull eyes clouded by drugs and pain.

"She already said we... we're different from them. Because we care," Kali mumbles, outside of the memory, in the hospital bed. She's in a place of healing now. Cyrrus reminds himself of that as he brushes his lips over her forehead. She'd mumbled the same words half-coherently in the middle of the night when Cyrrus held her as she thrashed through these same nightmares. He'd done then what he's doing now: fed unraveling strands of Force power through her blood to heal her and lead her out. Except, this time, they only seem to knot and tangle more completely, wrapping around them both, pulling them deeper into the darkness.

"I _am _different," Kali insists, responding to Cah's torments. "I _care_."

"Oh, Kali..." Master Cah whispers, running his fingers through her hair. He hums gently. Her stomach flips and squirms, and bile rises up in her throat, but she swallows it. "Do you think I don't?" the old man asks softly. "Wouldn't it be so much easier, if we could just turn off our caring?"

Cyrrus can feel the burning of Cah's mark above his heart, throbbing like trace-lines of fire, mirroring each deep cut he'd felt when he'd rested his gentle touch over Kali's skin as he claimed her as his, somebody _wanted_. Someone who _cared_ wouldn't do that to her, wouldn't...

_Someone who cared wouldn't dig cold tendrils of terror into a human mind, wouldn't paralyze it with pressure, the weight of a Force push, enough to turn a brain to jelly, the human body is so fragile: just one pound of pressure, three minutes underwater, ten pints of blood... _Someone who cared wouldn't know those things, wouldn't _use _them. Cyrrus hears screaming and feels _glee_, a kind of rush. There is a moment, at the edge of death, when nobody cares anymore. And it is beautiful.

There is a smirk on Master Cah's face as he reads this truth in Kali, in her emotions and the flashing images of her thoughts. It freezes her, and she flinches away so she doesn't have to look at him anymore. "You don't care about me," she insists, spitting out the words. "It doesn't _matter_. I don't _want _you to. But just... just don't fucking _lie_, okay?"

He traces the sharp nail of his pointer finger down the sensitive, goosebump-covered flesh of her arm, and surprises her completely by quickly and decisively undoing the bindings that are keeping her paralyzed.

The electric hum of their charge dies away, only increasing the weight of the silence in the small, dark cell.

Master Cah leans in close, until their foreheads are the barest trace away from touching. He rests his palm against her cheek and gently forces her to look up at him. "Do you really think I'm lying, Kali? I taught you better than that."

"Fuck you. Sir. With all due respect."

He starts to laugh, a loud, genuine guffaw that lasts for nearly a minute. It's not an affectation either. He is genuinely amused, for the first time in the _five years_ they have spent together.

His fingers tighten around her wrist as he gets control of himself. His other hand wrenches around her chin. "_I _made you strong, Kali." His voice is forceful, if quiet. She hears it pressing in her mind with a volume far stronger than what she hears in her ears. "I made you a _survivor_."

Without thinking, she _pushes _him away. He wasn't expecting it. He doesn't manage to catch himself in time. His body _slams _against the wall. He recovers, staggers to his feet. She knew he would.

She slides to her feet and stares him down, not caring that she is undressed, _barely _covered. "You didn't," she insists. "I was better than you before I ever _met _you. You wouldn't have picked me if I wasn't."

Cyrrus smiles. He settles back on his heels and allows himself to breathe for a moment as Kali shifts beneath his touch and blinks her eyes open. She gives him a weak smile, and he laughs. He wipes his hands over his sweat soaked face and sighs. The weight of exhaustion settles over him, but for the first time he can feel Kali fighting back against the tangled, choking webs of lies and fear.


	6. Degrees of Separation

Cyrrus hadn't realized how much he'd missed her, how much more empty his life had been without her. She'd grown up, without him realizing it. They'd been separated for years, by a war neither of them wanted to fight. Now, he hugs her close, desperate to do something with this second chance they've been given. He hadn't had the time to really talk to her, about what she'd been doing in those years without him. He'd barely started to question whether the fragile connection they'd once built hadn't ripped apart entirely. He'd spent one night on Coruscant whispering promises to protect her that he could never keep, before the Empire sent them spinning off in opposite directions. He's only now starting to discover what that meant, for her.

"What are you doing here?" Kali pulled her hair back and ignored the question. She focused instead on waiting for the meal tray that dumped into her hand with a metallic hiss. "Hey! I'm talking to you."

She took her time, but eventually, she did glance up, at Terrek, the Twi'lekk bully she hadn't seen since they were both kids. "You're still alive," she said simply. It had been a long time, and he couldn't intimidate her anymore. To tell the truth, he looked like he'd been through his hell. There were deep scars and cybernetic replacements scattered prominently all over his body. He'd been out fighting on the front lines of the war High Command had spent years refusing to acknowledge. Kali frowned. "Looks like the rebels are ripping you apart."

Terrek scowled, and she could feel the churning anger swirling inside of him. He _hated. _He wanted revenge. A long time ago, she'd thought it was about her, but they'd both grown up since then. Now, she can understand what it's like to fight against anything you're pointed at, to let yourself get torn to pieces because you refuse to die. She held his gaze, until he eventually broke away first. It wasn't exactly submission, but there was a hint of apology. Or understanding. "The war's getting serious," she conceded, with her own form of apology, a recognition of the fight they were both in the middle of. "Alderaan was a major hit."

"Did you know about it?" Terrek asked sharply.

Kali froze, surprised by the immediate recognition that he was asking because he trusted her as a source of information, one of the highest-up in the Empire's tangled network of intelligence officers, someone shaped by shared experiences who might level with him instead of hiding behind layers of bullshit and propaganda. "No," she told him, honestly.

He nodded, after a long moment, and grabbed a cup of caf from the dispenser. "Force be with you, Kali," he said simply, before moving on, leaving her standing there shaken and even more confused.

She ate her meal without tasting it, and headed off to fight the war in her own way, jumping into the ship that she still thought of as belonging to her _and Cyrrus_. It had always been Master Cah's ship, but after providing her with the illusion of safety for a few months, it only took a few moments to feel tainted by his presence. He watched her judgmentally from the places where Cyrrus used to sit.

"What do you need me for?" she asked, softly. And then, more loudly: "What're _you _doing here?" She spit out the words like a challenge because she already _knew _the answer: they both did. He was there to test her loyalty, and to remind her that he is in charge, he owns her, and if she escapes him temporarily, it is only at his whim.

She scowled. "You know we must be really bad at our jobs, right? If you're still finding Force-sensitive kids hidden out on the Rim?"

"Don't be impertinent."

Kali smirked, flipping her power-down lightsaber around between her fingers and _ignoring _him. They didn't talk, although she could feel him pressing against the walls of her mind, just by being there. By the time the ship entered the orbit of the nondescript world with a name she couldn't remember, that didn't matter anyway, she was hovering close to the airlock waiting for to land, looking forward to solid ground and another chance to run away.

The air she breathed on that insignificant planet was heavy and thick with the fumes of oil and smoke: the people there still burned fire for heat. The world was practically _empty, _a shock to the system after the pulsing, constant noise of Coruscant.

There was grass. Trees. And she couldn't shake the nagging uncertainty that clung to every step she took, because this place was too much like _another_ world, another mission. Another Force-sensitive she hunted down and killed, while he was watching.

The little boy they came for lived in family housing on the Imperial garrison. His midichlorian count was recorded in a routine blood test. But Kali didn't care about the numbers. She didn't need them, not when she could _feel_ him in the Force, like a bright light, pure, broadcasting like a beacon. _Nobody_ does that, not anymore. It's a death sentence. Or, maybe, something much worse. The thought took her by surprise.

She closed her eyes and _listened_, to the child's keening whimpers, and she felt the overwhelming burst of fear and uncertainty that radiated from him. It pulled at her, reaching into her heart for something resonating deep within, a phantom pain, a memory she hadn't realized she had. It _ripped _at her, tearing her apart. It _hurt_. Her heartbeat sped up as adrenaline flooded through her system, unaware that the pain wasn't physical and could not be washed away with hormones.

Memories come to her in flashes buried deep, and sometimes she wonders if they're real, but she knows they _must be_, because she works so hard to bury them and to bury how much she _wants _them. They're never enough. She reaches out for them, but they're too hazy, all shadowy and gray. Whispered words she can't quite hear, sensations of feeling, loud buzzing noise, all from before she understood what that meant. She remembers laughter, warmth, and bright colors. Dough in her hands, squeezing and squishy, and licking her fingers afterward, when they were messy and sweet.

"I won't hurt you," she whispered, and she reached out a hand, and the motion, the _moment_, was instantly familiar, warped and shifted by time and space, years and perspective.

She hadn't been afraid of the stormtroopers, though others were. Their presence and increasing numbers on their small world, housing mostly farmers, had often sent her parents into their bedroom to fight: not physically, not the way she'd learn later, in the Temple, but with quiet whispers that cut off as the children listened at the door. She'd been so young, so small, _too young _to understand, but their fear and anger and the fact that she somehow _knew_ that they were talking about her even when they never said her name had been enough to set her crying every time. Her older brothers - even her parents - had assumed that she was crying about the stormtroopers, with their heavy guns and bulky white armor. She hadn't yet had the vocabulary to tell them that wasn't what caused her fear. Even _still_, she's not sure she has the words to explain it.

Words aren't so necessary, for her. She'd struggled through the required lessons and she was glad enough that Master Cah rarely chastised her for not completing them. She doesn't _think _in words. They cannot come close to capturing the range and speed of the sensations with which she navigates the world. She can't limit her descriptions to the codes of language, _any _language, especially not Imperial Basic. And, truthfully, she doesn't have to. She communicates in the layered images and waves of feeling that comprise life for the Force-sensitive, a deep and unpredictable far-reaching pool into which she sends her ripples. And sometimes, like in this place, with a little boy hiding, alone and afraid, someone sends ripples back.

What scared her wasn't the guns or the threat of violence, but the _absence _of the Force, washed away in their presence. They left her alone, cowering in the dark; they took away everything that made her who she was.

She looked into this child's eyes, and, somehow, she understood that he shared the same fears. They were connected by something that is indescribable but no less important for that. They shared a sense of the world that goes beyond easily explainable. They were - _are _- young, but even at the age when children are still learning to toddle, they were old enough to understand that there was something in them that was different and dangerous; enough to make people fear and kill them.

Kali crawled closer to the child, staring directly into his eyes, trying to project a sense of comfort and courage that she did not herself actually _feel_. "I won't hurt you," she whispered again, as she touched his mind, and he _believed _her, and the most surprising thing was that, for a flickering heartbeat, she believed herself, in that instant when they were both connected.

There is still some truth in her, beneath all the lies and manipulation. In that moment, she forgot that she commanded a unit of stormtroopers, waiting on her word to come in from the dusty, war-torn street outside to take the boy. She forgot (or tried to) that Master Cah sat waiting to dissect and judge her every move. None of that _mattered,_ just for that one second, as her heart beat, soft and steady, and the little boy crawled into her waiting arms. She held him tightly, and his warm weight against her chest stirred something in her. She rubbed his back in slow circles and sighed softly as he popped his thumb into his mouth and blinked up at her. His eyes were gray, like stormclouds, or still water. She never learned his name.

"Commander?" The crackling static burst of her comlink startled her, and she fumbled at the switch that would let her reply - or turn it off. After a nearly unforgivably long pause, she acknowledged the call.

"We're ready, trooper."

"Acknowledged. Stand by for retrieval." There was another crackle, and the communication cut out. The boy burrowed his head deeper into her shoulder and whimpered, unsettled by the silence left behind.

How old was he? Kali doesn't know anything about kids. He seemed so tiny, so fragile. Was _she _that small when the Empire found her?

She sent more soothing waves of calm through the Force, as the troop transports hummed and whirred outside. The sound set the child stirring in her arms again. He stared at her with wide eyes, and she could feel the pulse of fear - pure terror - radiating out from him. He was right to be afraid. She reached into his mind with a simple command; and he went limp, falling instantly to sleep. His breath was still warm and sticky against her neck. She shifted his weight in her arms and strode onto the ship. The troopers followed her, guns at the ready, tracking their path. A thrill of uneasiness rippled through her, a crawling sensation. She could feel their hyperalertness, their keen sense of duty, and their engineered aversion to Force users. And she couldn't tell in that moment whether they were aiming for the young, untrained toddler in her arms, or for her. She wasn't sure it mattered.

She tucked the boy into her own bunk. There was nowhere better to put him, and she didn't need the sleep, not really. She filled a plastic mess kit cup with caf and as many flimsiplast packets of sugar as she could easily fit in her hand - at least six. She could feel Master Cah's disapproval before she even glanced up to see him standing at the threshold of the kitchen. The angle of the light in the hall sent his dark shadow looming over most of the smooth, shiny-reflective floor. "One who is strong in the Force need not rely on such artificial forms of boosting energy."

Kali shrugged. It was an old argument, and if he was really angry with her she'd feel it a lot more than in just a ripple of disapproval and a canned lecture.

He sighed, and sat down across from her. "You did well, Kali."

She nodded, crushing her uncertainty and going through the motions. Master Cah knew she was hiding things, and she knew that if he wanted to he could have pulled them out of her without the slightest hesitation or difficulty. He let it slide, though. Maybe he was right, anyway. Surely it's better that the boy be with them than dead. Isn't it?

She could still feel the shadowy imprints of his sticky fingers wrapped around her neck, and her stomach sank as though weighted down by a cold rock at the thought of being ordered to kill him. Because she'd have done it. And that knowledge weighs the heaviest of all.

"Who found me?" she blurted out, suddenly and without knowing what sparked the question.

Master Cah's eyes darkened. She froze. Didn't squirm, didn't speak... simply _froze_. He'd culled that thoughtless impulsivity. She'd learned well the power of questions. And the sharper and more potent power of silence.

She didn't flinch when he squeezed her shoulder in imitation of an action that _should _be reassuring. He lifted her chin, and she stared him down with narrowed eyes. He smiled. "Whoever it was," he said evenly. "They saved your life. Just as you saved him." He nodded in the direction of the bunk where the little Force-sensitive boy was presumably still sleeping.

Kali closed her eyes, and nodded. "Yes, Master."

She couldn't see the smirk that danced across Master Cah's face, but she could _feel _it. She curled up in her chair and pointedly ignored him for the rest of the ride to Coruscant, and broke away as soon as she possibly could once they were on planet. She stalked through the streets of the lower city without really seeing. Speeders flew above her head trailing streaks of light, like shooting stars or the elongated lines of hyperspace. She ignored them, pressing toward her goal with single-minded determination. Her goal being anything that would drown out the voices in her head. Her fingers closed around the vial, and her eyes flickered up to the boy slinging the stuff with bright eyes and frantic gestures. The dealer snorted. "No offense," he insisted, "But you really don't look like the type who... belongs here."

She lashed out with everything in her, fueling her action with pain and desperation. This boy was _simple_. Unlocking his mind was easy to a child who grew up surrounded by Sith who protected their thoughts with layers of shields and manipulations and violent retribution. Her hands closed around the boy's throat and she struck out with a burst of pure nightmare-inducing _terror _that left him babbling. He slipped her his entire supply, and she let him go, without caring.

The drugs washed through her system, opening the darkness of her world to bright lights and a euphoric high that let her lose control and erased all her fear. She was still riding the crest of the high when she returned to the small apartment she shared with Master Cah. Her room was little more than a closet, and she _hated it_, after spending her entire life in the common dorms where the white noise created by other children served as an insulator against the strength of her own emotions.

"What the hell were you thinking, pulling a stunt like that?"

Master Cah did not explode. He wasn't even angry, not in the conventional sense of the term. He never was. He's always simply calculating... weighing the risk of her actions and determined to impress upon her the _consequences_. His face remained impassive, but the wash of displeasure he sent roiling out through the Force hit her like a slap to the face, and she flinched involuntarily. That, of course, only made him more angry. She bit her lip and forced herself to take a deep breath, to steady herself. She ducked her head, a submissive gesture, learned by rote, but she did not apologize. Apologies are a sign of weakness, and weakness is not tolerated and will get her killed. She shrugged. She _wasn't _thinking. He knew it, but he could not force her to admit it. "We _do not exist_, girl," he snarled. "The Force is a _weapon_, a tool, your sensitivity to it is the only thing that gives you value to this Empire! It does not control you, _you control it_."

She nodded, dully, as she bent to his will. He didn't lay a hand on her. He didn't need to.

She waited for him to walk away and curled up in her bed - that, at least, was the same as the dorm room beds she remembers, or close enough - and the she dug for the other vial stashed in her boot. It wasn't there. There wasn't any more, she'd used it all.

Kali bites her lip and shivers and her head spins and the memories hit her harder than any weapon, she falters beneath them. When Cyrrus wraps his arms around her, she barely recognizes him. When she does, the familiarity is enough to give her a sense of who she is, it reignites the spark that is her will to fight. She struggles in his arms and pushes against him, weak but unwilling to surrender. "I'm a big girl, Cyrrus. I don't need your protection."

"The hell you don't!" He whirls on her, _pushing _with all the force at his command, physical and otherwise. She winces and cries out as he _hurts _her, purposely, _forcing _her to see how fragile she really is. She can barely hold herself upright. Without her training, she'd already be _dead_. She exacerbates her own weakness, relying on drugs and suffering through withdrawal, and he knows that too.

Her heartbeat pulses, thready and too fast and sporadic by far. He fumbles for the needle in the medpac he carries, by habit, now, and injects it quickly into the vein at her neck. The drug will knock her out, and stabilize her. She slips under again. Cyrrus pulls out of her mind and sits huddled in the chair, refusing to let go of her hand, listening to the steady beeping of the monitors recording her heartbeat.

He reminds himself that she fought back. Even when he can feel her slipping, Cyrrus forces himself to focus on that, to hold onto it and send that certainty pushing backwards to buoy Kali and pull her out of the cage of false simplicity that she's lost in. No wonder she'd rather not feel anything. What has she ever felt, except darkness and pain?

When he overrode her emotional responses with the equivalent of a mental restraining bolt, there was a part of her that wanted it. But by taking away the confusion and uncertainty, he took away everything that she is. "I'm sorry," he whispers. "Kali, I don't want to hurt you. I just... I..." he swallows hard, choking and empty. He refuses to let her go.

He wonders if things would have been different, if, at the end of the war, he would've just let things fall apart.

On their first mission together she was still an apprentice, barely more than a child. Three years and a lifetime later, she moved with more confidence, more thoughtfulness, a more commanding presence (which was good, because she _commanded_ a Star Destroyer - just for now, for this one mission, but that was still enough). She stared him down, and he couldn't help but squirm, despite himself. "Good to see you again, Kali," he said. It was supposed to come out smooth, but it just made him sound like an _idiot_.

Kali nodded, professionally, in his direction. He snorted. He could feel the probe she was sending out in the Force, a wash of... comfort and familiarity, like a handshake, or a hug, some unnameable emotion that managed to capture "Good to see you, too," without the need for words. He sent her back another touch, and she froze, and shook her head just slightly. And ignored him, so obviously that she was clearly making a point of doing it on purpose.

He found her in the middle of the night, pacing a hole in the deck of the officer's mess - which was above his pay grade, but she'd cleared him through without comment above the half-hearted protests of the security droid. "So..." he said, guardedly. "What do you think this mission? The intel any good?"

"I'd hope so," she told him sharply. "It's my intel. I don't fuck up, Cyrrus."

"Bullshit!" he snapped.

They stared at each other across the smooth, heavily lacquered table that _almost _managed not to look like it was made of metal and plastic. He waited for her to lash out at him. But she just laughed. And he found that the tension he hadn't realized he'd been holding drained from his shoulders.

"We both know this isn't about that," Kali pressed, with a soft but insistent voice.

"I think we're both beyond pity fucks now. _Commander_."

She snorted. "You wouldn't fuck me when I _begged _you to, Cyrrus." She said it jokingly, but he froze, and ducked his head, and she could feel the emotions spilling out from him in the Force.

No, he never fucked her, but he loved her. _Loves her_, still. Even though they both know better.

Kali sighed. "I've never been good at this military crap and you know it."

"You think I am?" Cyrrus asked softly, and his voice trembled, though just barely. He wouldn't meet her eyes. She raised an eyebrow and pointedly traced an eye over his armor, custom-modded Stormtrooper kit. It was different than it had been when she'd last seen him, but it was recognizable all the same. He nodded, conceding the point. Still, he's an _engineer._ She's the one that's good at giving orders. It's why she outranks him. She jumped up onto the tabletop and let her legs swing back and forth, and in that moment he allowed himself to remember that she's still the same age as the useless kids in Basic. Or the ones laughing on the quad avoiding homework at the University of Coruscant.

He smiled, opening his mind just enough to invite her to follow the trail of his thoughts. And as she did, a small smile crept onto her face, and flooded him with a genuine warmth that he'd forgotten - a feeling of contentment mixed with a child's giggle and the touch of her fingers tangled up in his. These moments of innocence are so damned _rare_, especially with her, that every time he catches one it's worth remembering.

A ripple of worry flipped through his stomach, because usually the only thing that lowers her inhibitions this much is alcohol, or 'stim. Then, he immediately wondered if he _should _worry - he isn't judging her: he can't, he _won't_ - but he does _care_. His arm stretched out before he could stop himself, and latched onto hers. She smiled, her eyes still bright, and she fell into him, and he held her, and soon she was practically falling asleep in his arms, the weight of crushing exhaustion finally allowed to crumble onto her shoulders now that he was here to take some of it onto himself.

"I guess some things remain the same," he commented, neutrally. They really had come a long way from the tiny ship where they drifted alone through the Unknown Regions. The question now is whether there's anything left of the connection they'd created out of necessity in those close quarters. He decided it hardly mattered, after so long. He wouldn't push it - she wouldn't respond anyway if he did. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop and drew her gaze. "You sure this isn't just wishful thinking?" he asked, softly. Pointedly.

She stopped fidgeting and stared him down. "You and me?" she asked, completely unnecessarily. He knew she remembered their nights on the Scimitar, late night conversations and long hours in space curled up together in a one-man bunk. He remembers holding her as she cried, falling apart completely in his arms. They _know _each other, on a level that can never be undone or taken away.

He shook his head. "I meant this... Hidden Temple, thing. You really think it's possible that there are more than a few Jedi left alive?"

She shrugged, a smile playing at the corner of her lips. We're alive," she reminded him.

"Yeah," he admitted. "I guess so."

"We're a liability, Cyrrus. A danger. The Purge doesn't end until we're _all _gone."

"We're just tools to be discarded? You really believe that?"

She shrugged. "They bred an entire army. Disposable people is pretty much their specialty."

"That wasn't the Empire," he reminded her, guardedly.

"Don't play stupid. Or naive. It _really _doesn't suit you."

Yeah... they'd come a long way. Things had changed, indeed. He _tried_, but it was damn near impossible to see the little girl in her now.

"You believe it," he whispered. It was no longer a question. He could feel the strength - the single-mindedness - of her belief.

She nodded, and he felt a flicker of something _else_, before it disappearred. Guilt, maybe, or the kind of uncertainty she couldn't afford any more. "It's not a lie, Cyrrus," she told him, with a dangerous edge in her voice. He nodded slightly, conceding her point. Imperial Command wouldn't have sent them out looking based on _nothing_, and chances were good she'd dug the information out herself, from scattered codes and fragments on the Holonet, and in messier, darker ways.

Her eyes narrowed as she watched him, and he could feel the insistent probe of her suspicions digging at his mind. He kicked her back, reflexively. They couldn't trust each other, not anymore - or else they were playing a game for those higher up than them, the puppet masters controlling the layers and webs of strings.

One day, he knew, he would have to lay it all out on the table. But he wasn't ready yet.

He shook his head and ran his hand through his hair, and blew out a frustrated sigh. Because he already knew his answer, didn't he?

He couldn't _afford _to trust her. He couldn't afford to trust _anyone_. They may have had something once, a connection. Maybe. But more likely, what they had was nothing more than two lonely, desperate people in a confined space. She is an _Inquisitor_. Everything in her has been conditioned to pull out secrets with lies and manipulation, and he _knew _the Hidden Temple was not just a myth. He knew, too, that that was why _he _was assigned to this mission with _her_.

This history they have is well known to more than just the two of them; and she would understand the games that their superiors play even better than he did. The question then shifted, he had to wonder about her: was she playing those games as well, or trying to break out from under them? And did he _care_?

He wished his feelings for Kali were as easy to sort out as a simple yes or no logic problem, or a design blueprint that follows an easily discernible series of steps. Except, as he sat there nibbling on his lower lip and trying to force his thoughts into some kind of order, he understood that what bothered him wasn't that he didn't know how he felt about her. It was that he _did_, and it went against everything he'd been taught and everything that is intelligent. He knew that he would throw his life away for her, destroy himself to keep her, let her trap and manipulate him if it meant they could stay together. And he knew, above all else, that she probably did not feel the same way and wouldn't admit it even if she did. But after all they've been through none of that mattered anymore, and it couldn't stop him from trying to grab hold of what he could, while he could.

"Guess we still can't sleep, eh?" she commented. He nodded, noncommittally, and wrestled the dispenser for a disposable cup full of caf that doesn't taste half as good as mud set on fire, just to give himself something to do. He settled into one of the bench seats, a respectable distance away from her, and tried to pretend he really did come in here just for something to drink. "You ever think we're on the wrong side, Cyrrus?" Kali asked softly.

The abruptness of the question nearly made him choke, but he swallowed hard and was grateful for the searing heat of the burning liquid pounding down his esophagus - it gave him cover for the shock that _clearly _played out in his reaction. He snorted, and shook his head, and his shoulders started to shake as laughter overwhelmed him. He buried his face in his hands, as Kali shot him a glare from over her knees, curled up to her chest. It was only then that he noticed that she hadn't been looking at him at all, but is starting out at nothing, at the dim-lit far wall of the cafeteria, several paces away. He frowned.

"Well," he said simply, after he'd sucked in a breath of air and was able to speak again. "You certainly aren't afraid to cut straight to the difficult questions, are you?"

She shrugged. "Why waste time?" she asked softly.

He doesn't answer at first, simply traced the Imperial logo carved into the smooth metallic surface of the table. "Guess it's in your blood, right? Inquisitor."

"Cyrrus, that's not fair!"

"You mean you're _not_ accusing me of treason?"

"Should I be?"

He sighed. They're alone - more or less - out here in deep space, but that doesn't kill instincts born of _years_ under surveillance. And he'd be stupid not to think they're still being watched. Kali reports to her master regularly. His is less demanding, less suspicious (or more trusting), but that doesn't make him safe. None of them are safe.

"Cyrrus," Kali interjected. "Should I be?" she asked, more forcefully.

He blew out a breath. "No... I dunno. I don't think we're on the wrong side. _Is_ there a right side?"

"Be simpler if there was."

"Yeah, I know. Kali, we're just _kids_. Just doing the best we can with what we have."

"Mmhmm."

"No more questions tonight, okay? Just... let's just... pretend."

"For how long?"

"Forever?"

She nodded, and lets him wrap his arm around her. She traced her finger along the seam running up the inside of his thigh until he jumped and shuddered beneath her. "That's not fair!" he protested, nibbling at her lip.

"Try to stop me," she teased, pushing back with her tongue. She fumbled with his shirt as she straddled him. "I'm pretty good at pretending, you know."

"Yeah, I um... I'd gotten that... impression." He pushed her backward, lifting her up with strong hands, guiding her to a more comfortable position.

She squirmed against his body. "Cyrrus," she murmurs.

"Mmmhmm?"

"Are you... this is really happening, right?"

"Do you want it to?"

"Fuck yes!" she cried, and he nodded, feeling the heat of her body against his and losing himself in the explosion of emotions he could feel radiating out from her in the Force. It was all desperate _wanting_, anything to escape. It's just that that time, he'd needed it equally badly. He pressed himself into her, gentle but insistent, and she pulled him down faster, harder. She didn't _want_ gentle. She wanted rough, hot, _real_. Passion, the kind of energy that would fuel her. She squirmed and screamed, breaking into panting moans as he traced a scratching trail up her back. His nails dug into the sensitive flesh of her back, biting deep.

They finished quickly, panting and sucking for air until their breathing slowed in tandem. The overhead emergency lighting shed red-tinted shadows over their pale, sweat-soaked skin.

"We don't have to save the galaxy single-handedly, you know?" she asked him softly.

"Yeah? I never figured you were much for taking orders."

"I never figured you were much for a... midnight snack."

"Point taken," he snickered.

"Wanna go again?"

"Kali -"

She laughed. "I was just _joking_, Cyrrus. Unless..."

"Kali, I don't... I don't want this... I don't want _us_, to be a joke. If this doesn't... if this doesn't _mean_ something, I don't want to do it. I _can't_."

She raised an eyebrow and glanced over to where their clothes were still strewn in a heap a few meters away. "You seemed to manage it alright," she pointed out. She wouldn't look at him. He could feel the _fear_ radiating out from her. Fear of rejection, fear of powerlessness, fear of _him_. "I don't do serious, Cyrrus. I just don't!"

He rested the palm of his hand flat against her cheek, cradling her with just a simple touch.

She could feel him vibrating with _need_, with want, with desire. But what he needed was so much more than she could give, and she knew it. She ducked her head and bit her lip and stilled herself before she could give herself away or give him any ammunition. She could not afford to let Cyrrus break her, or see her break.

"Kali, why don't you trust me?"

"I don't trust anyone," she told him flippantly. It wasn't a lie. It was, in fact, the truth, the _deepest _truth, but if she couched it in joking sarcasm, perhaps it would deflect him. She's good at manipulation, disguising information in the gradient that hides between truth and lie. People think that it's a simple yes or no, that people are either lying or telling the truth. She knows it's much more complicated than that. People hide truth in the static of lies, people deceive themselves until they can no longer tell the difference. The ones who spend their lives manipulating lies to get at the truth are the very best at it.

"You don't trust me either," she told Cyrrus evenly, truthfully.

He didn't deny it, or even try to deflect the question. He nodded. "Yeah, I don't trust anybody either." He shrugged. "Way we've been raised, right?"

Fuck.

He sighed. "It's not a lie, Kali."

He wasn't sure what he's expecting... for her to ask what he was talking about, maybe, or misinterpret his comment, or at least _clarify_ which of any of the possible layers of truth his nonspecific statement was referring to. But she didn't do any of those things. She just nodded. "Yeah, I know, Cyrrus."

He nodded too. Because of course she did. He'd always known it.

"I expected you to lie," she told him, honestly. He shrugged.

"I guess I want to pretend you're better than you think you are, Kali. Worth trusting."

"I'm _not_," she spit.

"Well, if that's true, than I'm already screwed, aren't I?"

"This isn't a game!" she screamed. "Do you have _any _idea... Damn it, Cyrrus! I can't protect you if -"

"You _can_," he cut in. "Of course you can, Kali, it's _your choice_, you can stop it!"

"What the fuck do you know?"

"More than you think," he whispered.

"Get out of here," she ordered. He held her gaze, unflinching, and she didn't move either and for a minute he'd have sworn she would fight him, but she didn't, and he ended up folding. He gave a curt nod and obeyed her order, picking up his caf on the way out.


	7. Erebus

Kali watched him go. She watched Cyrrus walk away, and she fought the urge to scream, to fight, to throw things, to erupt in a rage of Force-powered energy or attack the first person that crossed her path. She knows, full well, that plenty of people think that is what being a Sith _is_. She's heard the stories about Darth Vader just as much as everyone else has, and she knows enough to know they aren't just _stories_. The rumor mill exaggerates and makes things worse (Sometimes. Sometimes the rumor mill is in no way capable of capturing how _bad_ it really is.) She has seen - she has _felt_ - what happens when a Sith lets the passion that fuels power override any of the base rules that keep societies from crumbling, or any logical _sense_. She has _watched them _kill people, or torture them, for trivial offenses or questions. The thought of Vader choking a man to death for failing to meet a military objective doesn't surprise her in the least. It isn't often that she thinks of herself as Sith, more than just a word that doesn't mean anything, something she's _heard _since childhood. But _she is_. She contains within her the same darkness and power that terrifies the mundane citizens of the galaxy and that terrified _her_, as a child. And the thing that made her squirm the most was knowing exactly what Cyrrus _expected _her to do. She didn't want to do it. Force, it shouldn't have been _hard_, not after everything she had already done. It wasn't that she _couldn't_. Of course she _could. _It'd be easy. Just cram the feelings down, lock them behind a wall, swing the blade without seeing, without caring. She can make herself stop feeling, she can make herself forget.

"You can't."

She whirled around, even already knowing what she'd see. "You're not _real_," she growled.

She lashed out, _not even caring_, because she knew she could throw everything she has against the ghost of a Jedi she'd _already_ killed, and face no repercussions other than a few rumors tossed around among the crew of the ship under her command, and those would only help her cause. Force lightning twined itself around her fingers as she let her frustration and anger and confusion fuel it, coalescing into a physical form that bled out from inside her and gave her something to channel. She launched it at Tanny, screaming with rage and fear. As expected, the Jedi woman stood, unblinking, in the middle of the onslaught.

She shifted slightly and raised an eyebrow. "Why do you try so hard to get rid of me, Kali?"

"Because you're _not real_," Kali insisted, with gritted teeth that pushed the words out in percussive angry hisses. Her breathing came in panting gasps as she continued to fight against the ghost that no one else could see.

"Is that what you believe?" Tanny asked simply, quietly.

Kali curled her fingers into tight fists and tried as hard as she could to actively _ignore_ the woman's presence, but the Jedi was _right - _of course, infuriatingly – she's always right. Kali could _feel her _in the Force, as strong and clear as any living person; stronger, in fact, more clear in emotion and purpose, unshakable. Basically everything Kali _tries _to be and _can't_, as if she needed one more fucking reason to _hate_ this woman who had already been forgotten by every other damn person in the galaxy. _Fuck! _

She's not even the only Jedi that Kali has killed, just the first, and it would be _so much easier_ if she _was _just a manifestation of guilt. That's easy to erase, with drugs, with Force tweaks and manipulations - she knew Cah wouldn't do it, even if she asked him to, and she wouldn't ask him, not _ever_. Guilt is a weakness, especially guilt as sharp and violent as hers. She already knows her master takes advantage of her, uses her propensity to self-medicate as a tool to pull her tighter into his spiderweb, even as she uses the only means available to her to run farther and get away _from him_. _Knowing it _doesn't make it any easier to escape the trap.

"I can't think straight when you're around," she admitted, grudgingly and still _angrily_, to this woman who _is _something real even if she isn't explainable. The Force doesn't lie, it just _exists_, and the end of life is not the end of everything.

The admission, even wrapped up in the packaging of an accusation the way that it is, appeared to take the Force ghost by surprise. She froze, and sighed, and Kali was caught up in her presence - for just a brief time, the space of a few heartbeats, but it was enough to lose the adrenaline-sustained momentum of emotion and _not-caring _that had gotten her through most of the long, sleepless hours since Cyrrus showed up on _her ship_. It is completely impossible to pretend her past doesn't matter when it shows up on her front door and wants to _talk_.

And Tanny is the one constant nagging voice even more stable than Cyrrus.

"Why can't you leave me alone?" she snapped, not even sure which one of them she was asking. "You mess everything up."

Tanny didn't even bother trying to ask who Kali was addressing; maybe she was speaking for Cyrrus and maybe it didn't matter. "Kali, you know _why_."

Kali nodded, the answer coming to her in flashes of images and waves of emotion crashing against the already-cracking dam that can't hold back everything she's tried so hard to ignore, avoid, and outrun, stacking on top of itself over _years_. She decided a long time ago to bury her fear rather than admit to it, to fuel power and anger and action because _doing something_ was always better than crying. The galaxy is a cold, dark, uncaring place, and better to learn that sooner rather than later. No one comes to help you, and sniveling gets you nowhere, no matter how old you are. She'd raged against the beings who tried to teach her otherwise; whether they were real people or the voices in her own head who tried, mistakenly, to appeal to a sense of guilt or responsibility to some common good that had never been shared with her. Sometimes it was the victims she tortured, who thought that crying might buy them some kind of compassion. It didn't, it never did, but that never meant she didn't feel it. Burying the feelings worked well enough, but it never ever made the fear go away. And with every passing day, every _moment_, she struggles even harder to hold on to the lie; it slips out of her grasp, leaving its rough burns in the scars that mark her body, it frays and weakens and finally snaps.

"I'm scared," she whispered, the words ripped out from inside her, a breakdown as strong and real as one accompanied by tears. She couldn't find it in herself to fight anymore.

Suddenly, she felt a warmth around her, a strong, _real _touch, and an overwhelming wave of sensations that no half-substantial presence could match. He _smelled_ real; like sweat and soap - military issue, this time, but somehow he still smelled like Cyrrus underneath that. She crawled into his arms, leaned into his body. She didn't ask how he got there, she didn't _care_. She shivered as he held her, and he leaned into her and hummed a tuneless melody against the curve of her neck, and for the first time since their reunion he wasn't holding himself slightly apart from her, hesitant and treating her as an enemy. It's like he no longer cared what being with her would mean, that she probably would turn him over to the Empire that already saw him as a traitor regardless of evidence.

"I know," he told her, and somehow it felt reassuring, like he'd protect her, although that's ridiculous. Far more likely that they'd both fall together.

He nodded, as though he could read her thoughts. Maybe he could; she wasn't bothering to maintain her shields, she hadn't been, for hours. She hadn't let go enough that her emotional turmoil would influence any of the crew zombies walking around on the ship, but to any Force-user she'd be lit up like a beacon, broadcasting clearly and loudly.

"You and me against the world," Cyrrus promised. She nodded, though she wasn't sure she could believe in her own promises. Still, she felt a sense of calm, a resignation - if not confidence - in her decision. It didn't bother her even though she recognized this too: she'd seen it in the eyes, the relaxed muscles, the stabilized breathing, of the subjects pushed beyond the breaking point on the interrogation rack, usually just before they died. She knew that might be her, next. It probably would be. She's not enough of a threat to be given the gift of a quick death. Cah would take her apart, destroy her completely. Yet somehow, still, admitting that she is still afraid of him felt a little bit freeing. It gave her something _real _to fight.

"You still care," Cyrrus said softly. And when he said it, what she felt washing over her, stronger than anything else, was _trust_. _Belief in her_. No one had ever believed in her before.

She nodded. "That's why we're different than them," she told him. They are words that were pounded into her brain, in her nightmares, over and over, no matter how hard she tried to pretend she didn't hear them. "_We're _different." She isn't sure she believes in some all-powerful Force that can push her down a path of destiny. She didn't _want_ to believe in it, but even though she's _dead_, Tanny stuck close to her _and Cyrrus_, and believed in the power of two kids stolen from home and corrupted by hate, trusted in them to restore everything that's been broken by the Empire _and the Jedi_.

"You know you're asking me to _steal _a Star Destroyer?" Kali reminded Cyrrus. "It's... it's _mutiny_."

He shrugged. "It's not mutiny, you're the commander."

"Cyrrus -"

"You did say you were never good at this military thing anyway."

He said it evenly, seriously, but she snorted, and soon her shoulders were shaking with laughter. Cyrrus smiled too, and squeezed her hand. He wrapped her into a tight hug, and suddenly it was justlike they were stupid kids at Coruscant U, young and in love, or just horny, and who cared which? For this fraction of a second while they lied to each other, there was no life-or-death threat pressing down on them, there was nothing hanging in the balance.

He pulled at her clothes, and she let him. She grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him down, nibbling at his lower lip until she tasted blood and he pulled away. "We're not going to steal a Star Destroyer," he finally told her. It sounded like a chastisement, but at the same time, she couldn't shake the sense of relief.

Kali started thinking about logistics, squirming, as Cyrrus outlined a plan she only half listened to, involving a Lambda-class shuttle and a nearby planet, the last stronghold of the already-dead Jedi, or at the very least a bolthole where children are shielded, hidden from _people like her_. She wondered if she could trust her second-in-command, and knew she didn't have a choice. She finally settled on using the Force to suggest that he did not have any knowledge of what she'd done or where she'd gone. She'd known he'd be able to handle the simple military objectives of command; better than she could, at that. That was not what worried her.

She covered her tracks, and she covered them well. Master Cah has been teaching her how to do it since she was twelve years old. It was not, actually, the first time an Inquisitor had used the cover of a military mission to go off the grid and do their own thing. She'd known that no one would look for her or find it unusual until her _real superiors _realized that she wasn't reporting back to _them_.

She snuck a glance back to Cyrrus out of the corner of her eye and tried to calm the tension in her shoulders, to relax enough to be inconspicuous. "We don't owe them anything," she muttered, a hostile, selfish demand.

"We _do_. The Force surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the galaxy together. It shapes itself around us, we can shape it. We can bend the arc of the galaxy back toward the light, we can _fix things_. We can protect people."

She could protect people. Cyrrus offered her the chance to save the ones who would otherwise be killed, or corrupted as badly as she had been, stolen from home and twisted until they are so afraid of who they are that there's nothing left but anger. He offered her the chance to save herself. And she fumbled for the hope that such a thing was possible; she followed him.

Cyrrus guided the shuttle in so low that it kicked up a wind that billowed through the grass. Children ran and shouted and laughed in its wake. Cyrrus hovered above, waiting for the kids to scramble to safety before he started to land. He'd never been here or seen these kids, but they _looked _so damn familiar it broke his heart. "They're just kids," he reminded Kali, as though she couldn't see exactly what he saw, as he docked the shuttle and slowly lowered the ramp. But he had no way of knowing what she saw when she looked at them.

She kicked at the dirt and hovered a few steps behind him as he disembarked. "They're not _special_, Cyrrus," she reminded him, quietly. She kept her eyes on him rather than looking at the children, or the adults that appeared suddenly from behind simple shelters to guard them. Cyrrus noticed, because he _knows _how Kali is: always curious and searching. He also knew that she could feel these people in the Force, because he could. "Coruscant's full of kids," she demanded, a sullen argument, with herself more than with him, so he didn't respond. He'd had no idea what he was supposed to say anyway. He'd wanted to tell her that she deserves saving, that it isn't her _fault_ nobody stood up to the Empire to protect her when she was a toddler. If that's even what the two of them were doing attempting to do there on that planet. It felt so _complicated_, as he stood there in the modded Stormtrooper kit that is his second skin. He had no idea how to explain what side he was on.

Kali hovered close over his shoulder, looking younger and deceptively weak hiding in his shadow. He knew better than to underestimate her, and he could practically feel the mistrust crackling out from her skin; it matched exactly the suspicious stares of the former Jedi and Force-sensitives gathered around.

Cyrrus took a deep breath and wished, briefly, that his master were at his back. He didn't have the antagonistic relationship with his mentor that Kali has with hers. Though Master Beladir is, without a doubt, a dangerous man, he was also mostly supportive and encouraging and seemed to genuinely want to teach Cyrrus about the Force, over and above power and passion. It was enough to make him wonder. The Jedi and the Sith have had a lot in common for millennia. It is such a simple thing to reduce it down to a binary code of good vs. evil, but life is messy. It doesn't work that way. The truth of the matter is that the Jedi and the Sith are no different from any other warring factions or political organizations, capable of allying, and with differences that amounted to little more than a particularly long-lasting and bullhead philosophical debate. The people standing there in front of him were _his_ _people_, on the same side as he is, which is the side that keeps them all safe, and alive.

He stared down at one of the kids, a little boy brave enough to break out from the tight grip one of the serious looking women had on his forearm. He took a few steps forward toward Cyrrus before losing his nerve. The child crossed his arms over his chest and studied the Stormtrooper armor - and the lightsaber clipped onto its belt - with obvious interest.

And it was Kali who crouched down to the boy's level. Cyrrus released a long breath, exhaling the tension he'd so strongly felt. The not Jedi took their cue from him, and relaxed as well. Not completely - they'd learned well the lesson of Order 66 - but noticeably enough.

The child stared up at them, with trusting eyes. He popped his thumb into his mouth, and sucked, and Kali could feel his brightness in the Force, and she sighed, and tears stung her eyes, until she pushed herself up with sudden, hostile speed, and kicked a nearby crate until it shattered beneath her booted foot.

"Get out of here," she growled at the older Jedi who stood ready to guard the kids - to defend them to the death, if it came to that. "This location is compromised. You are not safe here any more."

"Kali..." Cyrrus breathed.

But she ignored him too. And she ignored the voices in her head.

And she ignored the guilt and memories and the fact that even though this kid was _not the same_ as the boy she failed to save while obeying orders just a couple of years and a lifetime ago, they _looked the same_ to her Force-torn and emotionally fucked up mind, and she couldn't honestly tell which answer was the right one because they _both _felt wrong.

She drew in a deep sigh and shoved the kid away, with a Force push that didn't require physically touching him. The boy tripped and managed - mostly - to catch himself before it turned into a serious fall that might have injured him. The palms of his hands got scraped up on the rough rocky ground, and the threadbare fabric of his pants ripped open at the knee. He glared at Kali accusingly, but before he could say a word, the telltale whine of an Imperial transport cut through the quiet. It sent a flare of panic through Cyrrus' blood, and he snapped his lightsaber to life without thinking. Behind him, the little boy broke into tearful, terrified wailing.

Cyrrus spun around to glare at Kali. His blade swept in toward her throat, and she staggered backward, reaching for her own weapon and flicking it on, blocking his attack with a move so quick he didn't see it. He felt it through the Force. "Cyrrus, it wasn't me," she whined. Behind them, the thundering of booted feet - wearing armor that looks just like his – pounded down like thunder. He reached out in the Force but couldn't feel anything from them, just an emotionless sense of purpose: orders to be carried out.

"_Dammit_, Cyrrus," Kali demanded. "Why would I call them?"

"Because it's your job!" he screamed. "It's what you _do._"

But he stopped fighting. He shut off his lightsaber, and they stood there, panting. After a moment, Kali shut hers off too.

The little boy was still crying. She couldn't feel any of the other Jedi, except in flickers and shadows, but she could read him. He whimpered - like the other boy - and had that been Cyrrus, once upon a time, had that been _her? _She wonders if he's safe, the way she'd promised/lied he would be? She closed her eyes and tried to imagine that tiny child with his golden curls surviving the kinds of tests the Empire would demand of him. He'd be young, still, five or six. Still innocent and undamaged, but already starting to break, to burn. But then, they'd underestimated her, too. And he'd been _so bright_, in the Force. So _strong_. One day, he'll be powerful; warped and angry. Someone to fear. Like she is. Or like she wants to be, maybe. Things would just be so much _easier _if she could turn off the nagging voices in her head, the guilt that hits her like a punch to the gut. She refuses to do it again. She _can't_.

"Cyrrus, take him," she snapped, thrusting the child into his waiting arms. Cyrrus barely managed not to drop the kid. Their eyes met, briefly, but she didn't let him wait. "Just go!" she yelled. "Get the fuck out of here. You _know _what'll happen if you don't."

"Kali -"

"Go!"

Cyrrus finally nodded, as the boy squirmed and cried. He ran for the tiny shuttle that he'd brought down to that world with her. Kali spun around and lit up her blade again, ready to defend herself against the stormtroopers.

She was outnumbered, overwhelmed by odds before the fight could even really get started. It didn't stop her from trying, but a whisper of painful emptiness ripped at the edges of her mind, and she frowned in confusion. And froze, as she recognized a too-familiar sensation that made her stomach squirm. She tried to throw up a shield, but it only flickered and collapsed, before she could even begin to solidify it. She tried to move, but couldn't. Pain flooded through her, she was paralyzed. And lightning tickled across her skin.

Master Cah smirked down at her. "Oh, child." he whispered, planting a kiss on the top of her head, gently combing her hair behind her ear. "You did so well. You did exactly as I expected."

Kali jerked and thrashed and tried to pull away from him, but he held her firmly, hugging her tightly against his chest. A wave of darkness fell over her, and the knot in her chest began to loosen as unnatural sleep overtook her.

When she woke up again, it was still to darkness, and familiar pain. The scalpel cut in, sharp and deep. She clenched her teeth, trying to still the frantic beating of her heart. Her eyes, watered and unfocused as they tried to deal with the overwhelming surge of adrenaline and agony, sought something familiar, and found him. Blood welled up and spilled over as he traced the blade smoothly through her flesh. She practiced breathing, finding her focus, drawing strength from the pain; letting it fuel her anger and her fear.

"You're doing well, my girl," Master Cah breathed, drawing his fingers through the dark, sweaty knots of her hair. She nodded. His touch was gentle, soft; this is punishment, but he won't let her see it that way. He's making her stronger, bringing her home. Giving her one last chance to save herself, save her life, recant her mistake. She'd only done what he wanted; she'd led him right to the Jedi he'd been seeking all this time, since before he'd ever claimed her, maybe since before she'd even been born. How could he punish her for that?

The restraints around her wrists dug deep bruises into her pale skin. She focused on _everything_, seeing it all clearly in a thousand fragmentary crystalized moments, all at once: Peace is a lie, there is only Passion. Through Passion, I gain Strength.

But _she _has to control her Passion, _not _the other way around. Most beings break easily, but not him. And not her. He'll _make sure_. Like all the Sith, and that is what she is - or will be. _Maybe_.

He passed on the old stories in ways that made her _work _to get them. Asking questions, that's what she's good at. Digging into dangerous places. Not knowing how to keep her mouth shut. It got her in trouble often enough when she was a kid, and _in trouble _is _not _a good place to be in the Temple. She has memories she tries to bury, but there is strength in those too. Fear leads to Anger. Fear is a useful tool, and she can wield it as long as it _does not control her_.

"This will make you stronger," he whispered, again, or maybe it was just an echo she was feeling, a memory of words in his voice, a desperate attempt to cling to _something_ valuable before she lost herself completely. She nodded, letting her eyes slip closed, trying to find her center as the world spun around her. The drugs crashed through her system, little bites of heightened awareness and heightened pain, like liquid fire running through her blood and nerves. She could feel the creeping whispers in her mind, insistent questions nagging at the walls. She could feel him knocking too, prying for weaknesses, then _pushing _hard against her shields. She fought back, unleashing all of the rage and fury her helplessness fueled. She threw him backward, with strength she gathered from memory and reality; all of the pain and punishment she'd ever felt: lightning and needles and monotone questions.

She knows how this works. And that gives her power. She knows the rhythm of questions, all the games they play to set their subjects off-balance. Sensory deprivation, drugs that alter the responses of the body, flooding the cells with light and dark in unpredictable waves that kill all reliable sense of time. Pain. Fear. Threats and promises in equal measure. Sending a living person in to calm the heightened, super-alert animal frenzy of a person on the edge of breaking; with soothing words and a simple injection that brings relief and flooding euphoria. The warmth of real touch, the cadence of an organic voice after the unending silent _pain_ inflicted by the IT-O is often the final straw.

People sing, sometimes; heartrending, broken melodies that flow over hiccuping sobs, comforting lullabies from a thousand worlds, rhymes and chants from childhood games. They ask her to join them, as if confiding some secret more powerful than any the Empire works so hard to steal from them. But she can only shake her head, because she doesn't know the words, she doesn't understand the games. And she doesn't miss them. She knows they see her as evil then, the personification of their worst fears; not a real person at all, but someone broken and empty. It works to her advantage. That's what she tells herself, anyway. Sometimes, in those moments, she can dig into their mind. It's _easy_, often, as simple as turning on the Holonet. She sees their lives in pictures, sometimes flickering and sometimes frozen, crystal clear, _super-sharp_. Because they've worked _so hard_ to hold on to those moments; clung to them, refused to let go, refused to lose them. They're never the things you'd expect, nothing valuable. When she reports the impressions that she gets, wrapped up in color and heat and waves of feeling, Master Cah shakes his head, slams a fist down on the smooth black plastisteel table, and attacks again with renewed fervor, firing question after question. But sometimes, she can feel those same washes and waves of emotion bleeding out from him; only quick flashes, carefully disguised. But they _are _there, in the shadows of his exhausted features and deadened eyes.

She never tells him that she can read him too.

Information is an advantage: he taught her that, a lesson instilled early and reinforced often. The more you know, the more control you have. _Yes_, passion is power, but patience and careful calculation has its own kind of power, too. And they have to balance both.

She shivered and seized in the darkness; haunted by the void left by the absence of what she needs. She bit down hard on her lower lip; tasted blood, and tried to convince herself that she didn't care. "I warned you, girl. Base addictions are traps for the weak-willed."

"I'm _not _weak-willed," she snarled. Her heart pounded heavily in her chest; her pulse roared like the rush of a waterfall, or the storm-wind of an inferno.

"Prove it," he demanded, but she couldn't. She told herself she didn't _want _to, she was _so tired_, exhausted in every fiber of her being. Her fear vibrated and resonated like a string pulled tight, thrumming on all frequencies through the Force, high to low. She could hear it in the silence of her cell. She was surrounded and filled by darkness and emptiness. And she knew what this was all about; that it was only the beginning, that pain would come and keep coming; waves of agony that crest and break until she drowned underneath them.

She couldn't see Master Cah, but somehow she could _hear _him smile, she could _feel _the cruelty of his laughter brushing over her through the Force. She wrapped her arms around her knees and bowed her head, she closed her eyes. She ignored him, carefully shut him away along with everything else.

"You're not giving up, are you? I taught you better than that."

He sighed, and it sounded _almost_ disappointed. Well, he did devote _a lot _of his time and energy training her over the years; almost a decade, by this point. A lot can change, in that much time. A life can come into being and grow; it can be snuffed out, or warp completely beyond recognition. Empires can rise, or crumple.

She glanced up, and tracked toward the sound of his voice, although she'd known that was no certain indicator of where he was actually standing. He might've been on the other side of the room. He might've been somewhere else completely.

"Do you believe people can change?" she asked him.

Her voice sounded rough and hoarse after days without use. He'd asked her before. It's a familiar question over the tools of their trade.

"Really change? No, Kali. I don't."

She nodded, though he might not have seen it. It was pitch black in the room, but with the Force they never need to rely on conventional senses to see. "So that means you were just as fucked up even when you worked for the good guys, right?"

He laughs, really laughs, out loud, she can _hear _it. The sound rings from the close metal walls and falls over her like snow. She'll show him how 'weak-willed' she really is.

"Kali, where do you think the Sith come from?" he finally asks. "We human beings are so very fragile. So very, very easy to break."

"I'm not afraid of you."

Cah smiled. His teeth glittered sharply in the darkness, highlighted by the dim blood-red lighting set deeply into the ceiling. "You're lying, Kali." He said it simply, a matter of known fact. Her head sunk down to her chest, as she struggled to breathe, to inhale enough oxygen. Pain seared through her, sharp stabbing agony along with a low, insistent throb in her head that echoed through her body in a slow pulse. _So _slow. So weak. She shivered, helpless to stop herself. She felt _so cold_. She convulsed and thrashed against the bindings strapping her tightly to the chair. She felt fingers brushing gently through her hair, a gentle hum, like a lullaby. Warmth. Her eyes slipped closed. "Cyrrus," she whispered, her lips barely able to move enough to form the words.

"Oh, my girl... don't worry. You're home."

She barely felt the sting of the needle in her neck before _relief _washed through her. Relief from pain. An artificially induced bliss, but it _felt _real enough.

When she opened her eyes again, she found herself in a familiar room. Smooth metal walls. A simple bunk, with a thin mattress below her. A rough blanket of faded gray-black fabric. Standard issue, but more than that - this one's worn in the same places. She could push her finger through the same ragged hole. It even smelled the same. She rolled over onto her back and tried to settle the churning nausea in her stomach. It was supposed to be a comfort, perhaps. Or a cruel taunt. She held the blanket tightly and wished for more of the drugs that had sent her spinning into artificial sleep in the first place.

"You're not alone."

"Shut up," she whined. She sounded like a little child and she knew it, but she didn't care about that. She couldn't find it in herself to care about much of anything. Kali curled her fingers into a fist and _glared_ at the Jedi. Who at that moment didn't look like a ghost at all. As always, she looked solid, _real_, except for a faint yellow-blue halo when she stands under certain types of light. There was almost no light at allin this small, windowless room, and when she looked, Kali could she the bloody blade-scar across the Jedi's neck.

"Kali, I never wanted to hurt you."

She glanced down at the sigil carved above her heart: his mark, and drew in a shaky breath. "Liar," she whispered.

Cah laughed, with genuine amusement, she could feel it bleeding out from him. "So much stronger than they thought," he whispered. She could feel his breath ghosting over the back of her neck, blowing through the hairs clinging there, and she shivered, squirming beneath his touch. "It's why I picked you."

His fingers brushed over her breast, covered only by the thin and tight-fitting sleeveless shirt she was wearing. His touch didn't linger long; it never did. It still froze her though. She drew in a breath and didn't let it go until Master Cah traced his hand behind her neck, and eventually, withdrew entirely. He urged her to sit up, without words, without _command_, just a subtle Force suggestion. She recognized it, but lacked the strength to fight it.

The room spun around her, and her head pounded. Her muscles protested against holding her weight: even sitting up left her shaking and unable to breathe steadily. This time, when he rubbed her back in gentle circles, she didn't push him away. When his thumb pulled across her cheek, she realized that silent tears had been falling without her even realizing it.

"It didn't... _start_, like this," he told her, softly. And despite herself, Kali was interested. She was born into the Empire, and from deep inside it's hard to imagine ever escaping. But Master Cah had been there at its inception. Nascent doubts and questions began to hover to the surface of her mind; easily picked out, like debris floating at the top of a pool. She stilled herself, imagining the water, calm, without wind or ripple. Her fingers wanted to twitch, her muscles wanted to move, adrenaline screamed inside her, a fight or flight response that's always nearly impossible to silence.

But she breathed instead, calm and quiet. Drawing on the techniques Cyrrus taught her, and Master Cah as well, though he'd done it in a far more threatening way. She'd learned long ago the value of patience, and silence. It's one of the simplest tricks of interrogation... simply leaving a void for the subject to fill. She sent her curiosity outward, formed it into an innocent, probing question.

Master Cah sighed. "We bring order to a galaxy in desperate need, Kali. You weren't... you're too young to remember the war. The uncertainty. The chaos. The absolute inaction of the Jedi."

"You killed them all," she insisted. She couldn't hold back the interjection, even if it meant punishment. But her Master didn't punish her for speaking out of turn, or even for her dangerously traitorous remark. He is an _Inquisitor_, after all. _Truth _is what's important. No matter the cost. He only nodded.

"Yes," he said simply. "We did."

The memory assaulted her yet again. She didn't shake it off. She wasn't surprised. The Force-presence that haunts her is never far; even though she only comes to visit when Kali is alone. The voice, the whispers, the _guilt_, stays close to the surface. She can hide it; with loud music and spice, but she can never kill it completely. _The blade flies toward her, and she catches it without thinking. It's easy_. She flicks it on, and the green-white light _snaps_ into existence.

"Do it." Master Cah's voice cut directly into her mind, spoken words on a resonant frequency that drowned out all other sound. At her feet, the woman cowered. She didn't look powerful, not like someone to look up to, or fear. She just looked... normal. Her hair hung down in a loose braid, with messy strands coming loose. Kali watched her shoulders and chest rise and fall with the rhythm of her breathing.

The Jedi glanced up at her, and Kali saw none of the fear she would've expected to find reflected there. Instead, as she completed the arc of the blade's movement - cutting straight through the woman's body until, in a heartbeat, _that _is what is in front of her - a body; meat - she felt nothing more than a crushing sense of _sadness_. And something else as well; loss, grief, and a last message sent not with words but with the flickering impressions and emotions that only the Force can carry: forgiveness. It unsettled her more strongly than any of the rest of it could. It did then, and it does now.

"You think it was the right thing to do?" she asked, softly. She held her master's attention with her own presence, in this rare moment where they feel _equal_, on the same side. She realized then that she was no longer _afraid _of him. She had nothing left to lose, it no longer mattered if he wants to kill her. She could feel herself _breaking_, or already broken. The fact that she recognized the fall didn't make it any more possible to catch herself.

Master Cah didn't answer the question, not directly. He didn't look at her either. Instead, he stared at the wall neither of them could see, because the red-tinted lighting of the interrogation cell didn't reach that far. "Order 66," he murmured softly. "One of a hundred and fifty lawful contingency plans known to every member of the Grand Army of the Republic. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine - _Emperor _Palpatine - gave a lawful order as Commander in Chief. We don't pick and choose what orders to follow."

"Of course we do." Kali snapped the retort before she could think about it. But she's _right_. "We're out for ourselves. _Our _survival, our advancement, our power. Over all else."

"Just so."

He walked away without another word, dimmed the lights, and left her to sleep, if she could.

She drifted in and out. She blinked her eyes open in the darkness, woken by the raw ache in her throat. She swallowed, but her throat was so dry... her stomach was empty. Her heartbeat seemed impossibly loud. The red-dimmed lights have faded now, changed to a more natural pre-dawn gray; though she knew the light of no sun could touch this place. She pushed herself up with weakened muscles, drew her knees up to her chest, waited.

When Master Cah came in, with soft footsteps and that familiar frown and ambiguous smile, she ducked away to avoid meeting his eyes, but didn't flinch. He traced his hand across her skinny shoulderblades, wrapped his strong arms around her, and fed her water in slow slips from a canteen. She shivered in his arms.

"Did you know I had a daughter, Kali?"

The question came from nowhere and startled her, but not nearly so much as the instant awareness that _he was voluntarily sharing information._

"What?"

She managed to choke out the single word, barely. Master Cah pursed his lips. Kali couldn't tell if it was because of the hoarseness of her voice, or the impertinence of her question, or its ambiguity. She shook her head, sending greasy, limp strands of unwashed hair into her eyes, until she pushed them out of the way. She licked her lips, and swallowed, and tried again. "What happened to her?" she asked. Her voice was quiet, but it echoed back from the metallic walls, and it was steady.

"She was taken from me when she was very young."

He said nothing else. He didn't need to. Kali nodded.

"She's dead now?" she asked softly, _feeling _the truth of it in the Force. The Force that had been honed strong in him. The Force that runs in families.

"Of course she is, Kali. We don't get to choose the orders that we follow."

* * *

* "Erebus" gets to be the chapter title because it was a Maryland NaNo challenge word and I really like it. According to Wikipedia: **Erebus** (Ancient Greek: Ἔρεβος, "deep darkness, shadow") - the first recorded instance of it was "place of darkness between earth and Hades".


	8. Shatterpoints

Cyrrus slumps into his chair, exhausted. He bows his head and swipes uselessly at itchy, gritty eyes. He forces himself to breathe, slowly and purposely. He clears his mind as much as he can, though no matter what he does a low buzz of anxiety still knocks insistently at the edges. He can feel the Force swirling around and through him, laced with color and sensation and taste. He picks up the skittering bursts of light, wild and uncontrolled, from the hard-faced woman in rumpled medic's scrubs who either doesn't know or won't admit what she is. And he feels the ever-present darkness in Kali, still. It is not so violent anymore. It seems to have settled, like deceptively calm water, like low-hanging clouds. Cyrrus' stomach squirms because that means that Kali is no longer resisting it. He reaches out for her, once more. He runs his thumb gently over her knuckles, without a word. She reacts to his touch with a slight tension, a brief attempt to pull away, and a quick, low moan that escapes her lips.

Cyrrus pounds his fist uselessly against the firm hospital mattress that barely yields to his violence. He's done _everything _he could think to do, in the long weeks since that chilly, windswept day when he'd first run for her, reaching out for her touch, the warmth of her body pressed up against his, the smell of her. He'd missed tangling his fingers into her dark hair, kissing her, holding her in the darkness until she fell asleep in his arms. He'd missed it so badly, _needed _it so badly, that he failed to see the reality in front of him until the moment Kali lashed out with a wave of Force energy strong enough to knock him down.

Even then, he hadn't been afraid, not really. Not of her. This is _Kali_. She is his, no matter what. He'd keep her safe, he'd let her hurt him. He can't remember when he started thinking that way. Does it matter?

He whispered her name, and his throat hurts. It hurt to breathe, to swallow, and he realized that he wantedto cry, but he didn't. He couldn't. Not in front of her, not then. Because in that moment; she wasn't the girl he knew, the girl he _loves_. She was Kali the Inquisitor, and he should have been afraid of her. Maybe he was, just a little. More than he wants to admit.

He knows that others underestimated her, for her whole life. He doesn't, and never has.

He listened. He listened to his ragged breathing and the buzzing hum of her lightsaber, the _crunch _of the grass and leaves under her booted feet. And he snapped his own blade to life.

She swung at him and he blocked the cut, pushing her back easily. She stumbled backward, overwhelmed by his weight and size advantage. And, as she always did, she got under him with her smaller frame, her speed, her agility. She's not a blade fighter. She avoids it as much as she possibly can. She never practiced until he forced her to. She has always hated it, since they were young, when she was viciously beaten by older, stronger boys with the means and permission to assault her before she had the skills to protect herself.

He knew how to take advantage of that fear, the hesitation she must've thought she'd overcome. He struck out at her with words and fists and weapons. Blood poured from her nose, and her skin crackled with the searing heat of lightning-burns.

"You think I'm just going to let you kill me?" she asked softly.

Her eyes reflected the fire of his rage. She burned with the heat of his attacks. What she felt, pouring off of him in rising clouds of humidity that she could touch and taste and feel, was the guilt and grief cycling back from her and flowing through him, amplified through a deadly feedback loop. She reacted to it the same way she always did. She pushed it away from her and punched through it with scalpel-sharp cuts of flippancy and sarcastic shots, manipulative lies to deflect from the truths that would destroy her.

"You won't do it," she told him, and, just like always, it was commentary intended to hurt and to confuse, but not a lie. She sighed, probing him for some hint of a weakness she could exploit. "You still fucking _trust _me," she told him, a gift and an apology all rolled up in one. "You _really _shouldn't."

She rolled the lightsaber out from under her and sliced upward. Cyrrus' blade snapped out from the blind spot on her left side and flipped her red-light weapon back toward her. She barely managed to snap her wrist back down to alter the trajectory of her cut and turn it into a parry.

She was tempted. She honestly was tempted to just let him slice her down, without a fuss. Without fanfare, without a fight. She's so utterly sick of fighting, so _exhausted._ But there is always something in her that refuses to just lay down and die.

Her weapon still glowed red; its light bounced off of the reflective smoothness of Cyrrus' armor and angled in just the right way to turn his dark eyes into glowing embers. Their emotions vibrated in a strange sort of resonance before Cyrrus aimed a hacking downward slice that she easily blocked. She pushed him backward, quickly finding her footing and regaining her rhythm, losing herself in the motions of combat, the easiest kind of leaving it all behind.

Her lightsaber moved like an extension of her own body, she chopped and swung and ducked, moving so quickly that Cyrrus couldn't touch her. She aimed for weak points, and looked for his familiar tells. Her heart pounded heavily and her breathing grew harsher and more ragged.

She began to wonder why he wasn't fighting back. Shouldn't he be making this _hard _for her? And then she felt it: the heaviness inside her mind, the darkness, the irresistible pressure. Every instinct in her screamed and fought and _pushed_ back. She lost. And she _got _lost.

Her vision spun and faltered and went black as unintelligible voices that command without words screamed in her head. There was pain, an explosion of white and a frequency too high-pitched to hear. There was static, and then, a white-noise kind of nothingness. Through the haze, she felt Cyrrus hovering somewhere over her shoulder, just out of sight. Somehow, she felt his arms wrapping themselves tightly around her, the warmth of his breath as he pleaded with her to stay, and made promises she knew he'd never be able to keep about saving her, protecting her, keeping her safe. "I will," he insisted, stupid, _stubborn _Cyrrus. "I won't let you die."

He reached for her desperately, and although she reached back, it wasn't _enough_. Cyrrus followed her through the darkest snares of her own mind, untangling the twisted knots that kept her trapped there. She could feel him reaching out for her, gently guiding her home, calling her. She listened to him, honing in on his voice and his soft words and strong presence. But she kept falling. She's _still _falling.

Cyrrus curses. He slams himself against the walls of her mind, struggles to fight against a monster that isn't physical. Healing someone with the Force... it takes a part of your soul. And Kali is very, _very _damaged. He has known that from the start. He draws in one last deep breath and grabs her hand. "Kali, do you trust me?" he asks softly.

In the quiet of the rebellion's hospital, she shivers against his chest, and nods.

_"You trust me, don't you?"_

The voice sounded so gentle and certain that she couldn't possibly question it. Sudden relief flooded through her body, washing away the pain and exhaustion. The drugs coursed through her blood, and the heavy weight of the artificial emptiness of the wall keeping her separated from the Force collapsed. Master Cah smiled, she could feel his pleasure, so strong it overwhelmed all of her questions. She was safe. She _belonged_. And she knew what she had to do.

She didn't worry about anything as the Empire's war machine carried her to the flashpoint fronts out on the Rim. She didn't question anything. All she knew was the truth of the information she'd been given: in words and pictures and impressions in the Force. She'd slipped up, made a mistake. She'd allowed Cyrrus to run and allowed herself to be captured. But she could make up for it, now. She could kill him, and with an army at her back, she would simultaneously kill the fragile rebellion he'd joined.

_"Do you trust me?" _he asks, as he searches frantically for some way to save her. Somehow even in the _absolute_ black-and-white certainty he can feel in her memories, he feels a flicker of something there. Hope. Light. She _does_, even though she shouldn't be allowed to.

It's the same connection that had allowed him to save himself, at the cost of destroying her. She should have killed him, but he wouldn't let her. All along, he'd figured it would be the other way around.

_"Kali, __stop__." _When Cyrrus gave the overwhelming command, it broke through all of her defenses. She was too tired to fight. She was already broken.

He can feel it now, as she shows him what he'd done to her. He _feels it_, from her side, and he knows the truth.

"I can't fix this," Cyrrus admits, his voice breaking. It rips him apart to say it out loud. There is nothing he can do. He's _tried_. He's tried everything.

Another voice, familiar now to him, through her, speaks to him without words, guides him through motion and feeling. The Force shows him the pathways, spiderweb lines and cracks, pressure points. Not a promise, but a possibility of hope. He begins to understand.

"There are rumors," he says softly, to the medic he can feel hovering in the doorway without bothering to turn around and see. "That the Jedi are coming back."

_There is no death, _Tanny's voice answers. _There is the Force._

Cyrrus nods. He's always known the truth, but never thought it would matter. All the might of the Empire is insignificant next to the Force, which moves on a level beyond mortal comprehension, in cycles none of them are capable of changing.

"The Jedi _aren't _coming back," the Force-sensitive doctor insists.

"They never went away," Cyrrus murmurs. The answer makes the other woman angry, he can feel the fury of her denial. _Neither _of them are Jedi, not quite. It's just a _word_. What they are can't be contained. But the rebellion shelters the children and allows for another chance, a possible future where someone might be able to get it right.

The Jedi were broken long before the Emperor made his move. But the Force itself isn't broken. It can't break.

"You can't save her," the woman insists. Her voice is hardened and cynical deadened by war. Cyrrus can't blame her. What he feels coming from her, though she tries so hard to hide it, is all angry suspicion.

He's tempted to agree with her, but the knowledge is _there,_ in his heart. He's tried everything except _one thing_.

_"Do you trust me?" _he'd asked Kali. The question now, is simple: does he trust himself? Enough to let go, completely, to allow the Force to work its will. Will he give himself up to save her, when he isn't sure that it will work?

Yes. Of course he will. It isn't even a question. He has known this from the start. Most of them learned quickly that no one was going to look out for them Kali learned the lesson harder than most. He remembers the little girl _surviving_ and it breaks his heart.

Lying in the hospital bed, and in the memories he's delved into, and in the moment she'd attacked him, blindly following orders she couldn't fight, Kali is still the desperate, helpless little girl with blood pouring from her nose, a broken arm, bruises painting pale white flesh that never saw the sun. Cyrrus looks into deadened eyes that used to be blue and are now a sunken gray color. She lashed out with everything she had because she's so damned _stubborn _that she refuses to break, and it was the only option she can see. He's always felt it in the way she shapes the Force, the way it shapes itself around her. It's dark, and angry, a blinding rush that prevents her from seeing him as anything other than a threat.

He can give her peace, the gentler, more beneficial Force that he's caught snatches and glimpses of in the quieter moments of his life. He can look out for her. But only if he ceases to be a threat.

Cyrrus takes one last long, deep breath and _pushes_, at the places where the tangled lines intersect. An explosion of light kindles in the darkness. Beeping monitors go haywire, there is screaming. And there is silence.

Kali wakes up suddenly, with a sharp intake of air. The world assaults her all at once, breaking her out from the haze of unreality she'd existed in for far too long. She shivers in the cold, fighting against the heavy weight of a touch she can feel but not see. She thrashes and flails and fights, reacting with adrenaline and the instincts of her body, without thinking. She hears the shallow gasps of her own breathing, stern voices, the sharp jab of a needle sliding into her arm. She _throws _her energy outward. There is a clatter and the crash of metal, the thud of a body landing, hard and awkwardly, against the floor. She winces, only half listening as an unfamiliar voice - heavily accented, curses in the traders' mix of Galactic Basic and Huttese. Not Imperial, then. She supposes she shouldn't be surprised.

She forces herself to _focus_, to look with mundane senses because the tangle of emotions coming at her in the Force is too heavy and complex to sort through. Colors form into lines, sounds begin to make sense. She is in a med bay, she recognizes that much. And in the state she's in she can't fight the primal panic that knowledge ignites; she begins to shiver, and her heart rate speeds up enough to send the monitor into a spastic fit of beeping.

She feels a cool hand on her forehead.

"Spike her again," someone growls. A different voice.

Darkness pulls her under. She doesn't fight it.

It's easier the second time through, the transition to alertness is more gradual and accompanied by a sense of expectation and control. She blinks open her eyes and waits as grey and white dots slowly resolve themselves into familiar contours. The hospital room is empty, this time, but nothing else seems to have changed. Except for the sucking void she feels somewhere deep inside her chest, the _absence_ of a constant pressure, like the unsettling turmoil of null gravity. She recognizes the sensation instantly and knows what it means, but she tries anyway. Her attempts at grasping the Force slip away from her. She can't feel it at all.

"Where's Cyrrus?" she asks softly. Her voice is rougher than she'd even expected. Her throat burns when she tries to speak. How long has it been, since she's last said a word? Her memories are fragmented when she can reach them at all.

Her fingers flex and pat for everything they can reach - wall, bed railing, an incredibly small flat slab of plasteel meant to be a combination storage shelf and desk, too awkwardly positioned to function as either one. Eventually, they close around a smooth round button, a signaling device that alerts one of the medical droids to come and attend her.

She frowns, squeezing her eyes shut and throwing her hands over her ears to block the wave of sensation that suddenly wraps itself tightly around her. "I'm sorry," whispers a cool and calculatingly soothing voice. Not the droid she expected. Kali opens her eyes again and freezes, believing at first that the woman in doctor's scrubs - though with a lightsaber still riding at her hip - is simply the familiar presence of the Force ghost _still _haunting her. But the woman's fingers, as they brush over Kali's body, moving purposefully to check scanning diodes and injection site and bandages, are warm and heavy, solid.

_So what? _Tanny has felt real before.

"Where's Cyrrus?" Kali repeats.

The woman - the Jedi, because that _is _what she is - just shakes her head. She maintains her composure well, but Kali's been trained for years to read people, and she can _feel _the other woman in the Force - why? Why did she take down whatever artificial shield was keeping that knowledge blocked off? This woman is sad, and _angry_. And empty, missing something important. Mourning. And she blames Kali, believes her to be the source and cause of this overwhelming sense of loss.

"Where is he?" Kali asks, more urgently, although the heavy weight in the pit of her stomach proves she already knows the answer.

The Jedi-Healer-doctor just shakes her head.

_I'm sorry_, she'd said. Nobody says that, _especially _in a hospital unless someone is _dead_. Cyrrus is dead. No one will say the words aloud, but they drop into Kali's mind and refuse to be twisted or waved away. _Cyrrus is dead._

She is surprised by the strength of the grief that wraps itself so tightly around her. It is more powerful then guilt, or fear, though those push in creeping at the edges, squeezing tightly around her heart. Kali wraps the blanket around herself and clenches her fingers around it so tightly it hurts. The fabric leaves deep imprints in her flesh.

It would be easy to give up, to retreat back into her comfortable shell, the walls and shields that have kept her safe if not completely protected through most of her life. The temptation to exist without feeling is strong, especially since she is perfectly aware that such an existence is not only possible but sustainable.

"You know, if you give up now, refuse to accept the gift he's given you... it'll make his sacrifice meaningless." Kali does not even need to open her eyes to respond to the cutting accusation, softly worded though it is. She doesn't _want _to open her eyes, to acknowledge the sometimes-visible confirmation that death isn't some simple escape. If Tanny is any indication, it's just as fucked up and messy as life is. Maybe more so.

"Who the hell do you think you are, to talk to me about _meaning_?"

"No one," Tanny spits back, sharp and bitter. "Of course not. What would I know? Little girl, do you think you're the only one who knows something about sacrifice. I watched the _galaxy_ burn, felt the lives of millions wink out in one instant -"

In that instant, one command, a few simple spoken words, were broadcast through a military frequency that has never been used since. The war was supposed to end that night, but the truth, of course, is that it had only just begun. The choking pressure of a crushing wave of fear rolling over the galaxy. People are calling it the Dark Times, in secret whispers from hidden corners.

_A thousand voices crying out, suddenly silenced. _

Kali knows what that feels like too. The shattered shards of Alderaan, the stinging pain of knives and needles and bits of broken glass from glitterstim vials. This emptiness of being left behind, alone, hurts worse than all of that.

"You _wanted _me to kill you," Kali whispers.

Tanny shrugs. "Maybe."

"You _let _me kill you." It's not a question. Isn't now, and wasn't, really, even then. The Jedi had held her gaze, unflinchingly, as she held the lightsaber to her throat. She hadn't fought.

_Why? _

She doesn't ask the question out loud, but that isn't the same as not asking it.

_Why would you let me kill you?_

_ Why would you want to die?_

Kali shakes her head and forces her way out of the black tunnel of her own head.

_You don't want to die, Kali_, demands the same stubborn voice that has kept her alive through every crisis and low point since she was an ignorant kid. That voice is constant and reliable and impossible to silence no matter how much she screams back or tries to ignore it. It's a voice Cyrrus would recognize and understand.

"He saved me," she says softly. The words slip past her lips, taste strange on her tongue. They escape the sheltered confines of her own personal bubble and drift out into the world, where other people can hear them. Other people like the Jedi, who still stands guard over Kali's hospital bed. Watching carefully, studying, learning from and trying to fix. Kali recognizes the calculating analysis going on behind the woman's serious frown, the way her eyes track every movement she makes, picking up on every subtle detail that might prove a vital clue or a breaking point.

She gets her affirmative answer, but the words are clinical. As soon as the healer seems satisfied with both her physical health and whatever mental stability Cyrrus had aimed for, she disappears from the room.

_He loved you, Kali_. Yeah. But without him she feels hollow. For years, it seems, all she'd been able to do was drag herself in his wake. Even in death, he couldn't free her from the bonds and traps of her own mind. The knowledge fills her with anger and resentment, a slow-burning fire that matches the funeral pyre. The Jedi attend to that ceremony with the same stoic seriousness they give to everything.

She watches the smoldering flames and tries to pretend it doesn't bother her, but the truth is she has never liked fire. It's never meant anything but destruction.

Still, better to watch the smoke than think about what it means: Cyrrus' body burning, erased from existence, _her fault_. He died to save her, and she didn't _ask _to be saved and doesn't deserve it.

_This is what you wanted, isn't it? _

To be left alone, to fight your own battles... She had tried _so hard_ to push him away, but he wouldn't give up on her, kept coming back. She was ordered to kill him, she almost _did_, seeing nothing but a traitor to the Empire they both feared and hated. And he sacrificed himself to save her.

Around her now, the Empire is already breaking. The Jedi she'd never been able to eradicate are already coming back together, and she can feel them in the Force, they call to her, they tell her she belongs with them. "Maybe, if things had been different, you could have been taken in by the Jedi," Tanny had once told her. Kali can't remember when she'd actually started _listening_ to the voice of that ghost instead of fighting it, but _now_, she recognizes familiar words and feelings shared between lonely children haunted by their differentness. The Force draws no distinctions beween them. Perhaps the only difference between Jedi and Sith are accidents of timing.

There is a thing called a shatterpoint. A moment of change, a plan set in motion by the Force. A trigger, that only they can see.

This was in motion from the beginning.

At the end, she's left alone, while the galaxy spirals out of her control, too big and too chaotic to grab hold of anything.

"You weren't supposed to _die_," she cries, as the flames lick at Cyrrus' body. Wrapped in the armor of the Empire that doesn't exist anymore, but she takes comfort in that. She can pretend he's not really dead. It's just metal and plastic. But she _feels_ the truth: it's hollow emptiness, and pain that she can't chase away. "You weren't supposed to die, and I hate you!" she screams. The people around her can certainly hear, but they say nothing. They avoid meeting her eye. _You especially weren't supposed to die for me,_ she demands stubbornly, silently. She lies to herself, still, in words she'll never say out loud.

"There is no death, Kali. There is the Force."

She scowls and frowns and taps her foot and _tries_, the way she's always tried, to escape the voice of guilt in her head.

"You know I'm so much more than that," Tanny admonishes.

And Kali looks - _really looks_ - for the first time, and realizes that this woman who has tormented her and tried to help her and been perhaps the one constant thing in her life for a decade and a thousand years - was no older when she died than Kali is now. She was never more than a little girl, struggling to make her way in the world. As uncertain of the future as Kali herself is. They stood on the precipice of change, forged by the same events and the same people, standing on opposite shores.

"Is he happy?" Kali whispers.

But Tanny only shrugs. "Are you?" she asks, an answer that is not an answer. A question that creates more questions.

"I don't know," Kali admits. It seems like the only thing to say, standing here alone, at the end of everything.

"It's not the end," the voices in her head insist. They sound like Cyrrus, now. She can feel the warmth of his fingers brushing across her cheeks as she cries. "Kali, you're not lying anymore."

* * *

And we're out. A novel's worth of wtf-ery, "in the books" (ha!). I know there are still plotholes and unanswered questions and a thousand other stories I could tell. Cyrrus' story, especially - the details of how he decided to switch sides, the mechanics of how he got there. I thought about going into it. I thought about weaving in another 5,000 words to pull back up over the 50k line. But I didn't. Because... for better or worse... _this_ is the story that was salvaged from the incredibly complex and completely unplanned 30 days of trusting myself as a writer in November 2012. It was always an experiment in emotional weirdness, a story I could feel but didn't have the words to express, until I wrote them anyway, without caring about logic, because this was never a logical story.

It was, to put it in the surprisingly spot-on words of the Television Without Pity recap for Battlestar Galactica: Razor - "a hallucination, an unwanted memory: only fair that we begin in post-traumatic stress, in muddled images, sights and sounds, tracing the history of _Pegasus_ from the end of the world, and onward." If you want a visual reference for Kali, look at Kendra Shaw.

Star Wars is _always_ a cyclical story. It doesn't end, it repeats: "All this has happened before and will happen again." It's a story of broken families, relationships that are bigger than we are. Love and redemption and sacrifice and hope that something better comes even though it doesn't seem possible now. "There is no greater love than this: to lay down one's life for a friend." We are all incredible screw-ups, and we are all worth saving.

Why _Star Wars_? (Why Battlestar Galactica? Why Babylon 5? Why Doctor Who?)

Because the stories you love when you are eleven stick with you. The stories that catch you at the right age are there for a reason. And there is incredible, amazing truth in science fiction. And maybe it's easier to dispense with logic in a galaxy far, far away. And, what the hell? Because lightsabers are fun. Always.


End file.
